Dennis was worried because Isaac had complained of a headache at the orphanage and had vomitted in a vacant lot. Isaac was worried that it was the sign paint. I was worried that it was something from when he fixed the Mulago Pathology Dept projector.
Dr. Troy Lund's preferred diagnosis was E. Coli infection from drinking the tap water. We put Isaac to bed and I took off past the giant storks on the fancy golf course to the grocery store to get hydration fluid.
Please note! Coca Cola is Isaac's preferred hydration fluid, not Dr Lund's! By the time I got back I didn't feel so well myself and I was up vomitting well past 2 AM. I felt so much better by 7 AM that Dr Troy revised his diagnosis to Food Poisoning and hauled off the one thing that Isaac and I had both consumed to the Microbiology Lab (more later!).
Isaac stayed abed today (missing a planned white water raft trip on the Nile), while I felt compelled to go to work. Why this compulsion? I feel so sorry for these pathologists. They are way behind in more ways than one.
Why would anyone not believe that the third world needs US pathologists to volunteer to help them?
So I sat down with Dr Susan Ndidde for a couple of hours at the crappy microscope and pushed glass.
By the way, one of the things that makes this microscope so crappy is the fact that the stage (the metal thing that holds the glass slide) isn't even the correct on for this scope so it doesn't fit and does't hold the slides (which is pretty key if you want to teach folks to look at blood or bone marrow smears). This is what, like a two buck item used? Come on!
We cleared her entire backlog of cases and even (when the clinical physician requested a "second look") revised one of her fellow pathologist's diagnoses from "Inflammation," to "Diffuse Large cell Lymphoma." Not bad for a few hours work in my weakened condition. By afternoon, Isaac even felt well enough to go to work with the Columbia University Biomechanical Engineering guys to fix the BiPAP machines in the Pediatric ICU.
By the way. At the end of our work session today Dr Susan Ndidde said that she had just gotten an e-mail from the CDC offering to buy her a new teaching microscope and that they needed her to tell them what she wants. Unbelievable! DO YOU SUPPOSE THAT THEY HAVE BEEN READING MY BLOG???????!!!!!!!
IMPORTANT NOTE TO FOLKS WHO CONTACT ME VIA U of M EMAIL. Since my arrival in Uganda, my U of M email has been inundated with scams. Please don't use, "Hello," or, "My dearest friend," in the subject line because I won't even open it.
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