First Day in the OR.

     So yesterday was technically the first day in the OR, so I'm backtracking a bit. I went into the hospital in the morning to check on the ICU patients (as I mentioned in the previous post) before coming back to the house. We waited for Irene to arrive to discuss cooking plans for our time here. Irene is a Kijabe native who will do cooking and cleaning at request for very little money (a dinner costs whatever she negotiates for the supplies and a 200 shilling fee for her services (200 shillings is like 2 bucks US). It's a pretty sweet deal. So we asked for pizza last night, gave her money for supplies, and when we came home our change was on the counter, and two (large) pizzas were in the fridge. It was fantastic. We were each assigned OR rooms yesterday (as supervisors for student anesthetists also in those rooms), and we also hunted down other rooms for nerve blocks. It was altogether quite successful, and I'm pleased to report zero fatalities on our watch.

My room yesterday. Almost all lower extremity surgeries are done under spinal. In general, the students and more senior KRNAs are quite good at spinal anesthetics, though we found a few areas for improvement.

After finishing in the OR, Joe got ICU signout for the evening and we headed home to change. We then walked up the mountain to the Rift Valley Academy (RVA), which is a boarding school in the standard fashion of western boarding schools. We tried to get into the weight room only to find it locked. We were directed to a dorm to get a key, but when we got there we learned that the key for Kijabe doctors is held at someone else's house. So we walked over to the second house to discover that it was not the correct one. Our third attempt was a success, and we took the key back up to RVA and found the weight room unlocked and in use. Awesome.

Joe after the gym with the mountains bordering the rift valley visible in the background.

Apparently Kijabe recycles. I thought this was a joke at first, but I have seen collectors since.

Our humble abode from the front. There are four of us living here currently.