Flash Floods and My Beautiful New Wardrobe for the “Theatre”

Monday it rained really hard all morning and on our drive to the school there were flash floods everywhere. People were trudging through “oceans of water” (as Bismark would call them) up to their wastes or couldn’t even leave their buildings because of the water. Surprisingly a lot of the cars drive right through these huge puddles although there came a point where our taxi driver wouldn’t take us any further. Bismark came to pick us up and take us to the hospital near to the school where we will also be working and while he was driving we could feel the water under the floor of the car and all of the rocks scraping against the underside. People are so thankful when the rains finally stop because it can be incredibly dangerous especially for the little kids and older adults.

On Tuesday we finally got to start work at the Police Hospital in Osu. We will be going there about 8 times so we will shuffle through about 4 of the wards each. Lauren spent the day in the pediatric ward, Jeff sat with a Cuban doctor in the out-patient department seeing cases from Malaria and HIV to Diabetes and intra-uterine cysts. I got to spend the day in the Theatre or as Americans refer to the OR with Dr. Zakariah. He is a general surgeon who studied in Ghana but also did some of his training in the UK. The first operation I got to watch was a direct hernia repair. We talked about the fact that in the US hernias are frequently repaired with mesh rather than just sutures but that about 15% of hernia operations in the US are due to recurrent hernias. The use of mesh is also really expensive and Ghana does not have the resources to provide such a surgical option. However, Dr. Z explained that using stitches he is able to create a slight mesh-like design using sutures only. The second surgery I got to see was actually performed by an OB/GYN who was removing an ectopic pregnancy on a woman for the second time. While the sight would have appeared gruesome to most it was incredible to witness. The doctor was also able to salvage the woman’s fallopian tube so that she would still have a chance to get pregnant in the future although after two ectopic pregnancies her chances are very low. The final surgery I watched was a Cholecystectomy (where the gallbladder is removed.) The ultrasound showed numerous stones when the gallbladder was removed Dr. Z allowed me and this other doctor to open it up and remove/count the stones. During the operation he was quizzing me on the arteries to the gallbladder and it was so intimidating – guess it’s what I have to look forward to in the near future.

Because we did not come fully prepared with scrubs I borrowed a gown from one of the nurses, Wooda. Jeff thought I looked funny, hope you enjoy the picture below! After the hospital we walked to the National Theater in Accra. It is pretty difficult to find information online or get somebody on the phone so we tried to get a schedule of the July shows. Apparently the schedule is not yet complete, I guess that is Africa. Hopefully we will be able to catch a good show there before we leave. On the tro tro ride back to Dansoman I just had to try the boiled corn they were selling in the tro-tro station. It was my first adventure with street food and it was quite delicious.