New Years Safari

The pictures turned out in the opposide order... always a problem!
Pic 1: Me and my babies Wolfgang and Impolala in the landcruiser.
Pic 2: Dancing new years eve! Dr. Per, Clement and Modi in action!
Pic 3: The socalled sunset... a cloudy one.
Pic 4: This is how close the elephants were!!!
Pic 5: Lunch at Happy Days in Karatu.

I decided very spontaneously to go on a safari on new years eve. Bjørg and Vigdis planned this trip with Clement a long time, and at the last minute me, Per and Modi dragged along. Really glad I did since most people here at Haydom went to Zanzibar those days. We travelled early in the morning the 31st. Stopped for a nice lunch in Karatu before we were off to Tarangire national park. I have never seen so many elephants in my life. We probably saw more than 100. Also saw some lions, a leopard, storks and much more. In the evening we had a good and expensive dinner at the Tarangire safari lodge were Bjørg, Vigdis and Clement also were sleeping. The hotel was full so me, Per and Modi had to sleep in a tent out in the bush 7 km from the hotel. Luckily there was a guard with a gun. Really didn’t feel like being eaten by a hyena that night. I actually woke up in the middle of the night, I dreamt that a huge elephant was running toward our tent. Scary.

The new years celebration was good. Strangly all guests went to bed around 11pm except us. We were dancing with the staff at the hotel and shared champagne with them at midnight! Really nice evening actually! The next day we were woken up at 6am to watch the sunset. After that we went on another safari where Clement actually got us lost in the middle of nowhere. Pessimistic Kristin was sure we were going to run out of fuel and get eaten by elephants and hyenas out there. Luckily we made it! After that we drove the ladies to Arusha airport, they were off to Zanzibar. Me and my boys did some shopping, Modi visited his family, and then we drove to Clements parents in Karatu to stay the night there.

Next day we took the landcruiser back to Haydom. We bought some extra seats so we didn’t have to sit so crowded. Me, Modi and Clement shared a row of seats. But in the row behind us 3 adults and 5 children were sitting… on 3 seats. And one of the girls really wanted to sit next to the mzungu (it actually means white possum), and I also had her 3 months old brother in my lap on the trip! (Those storks really did a good job, went to Tarangire empty-handed, and I come home with a baby boy and a little girl!!)

All together it was a really nice trip! Even though I spent shitloads of money it was worth it. And now I cannot afford to fly from Haydom to Dodoma/Arusha…

See one, do one, teach one!

That’s basically how they do things here! AND I DID MY FIRST CESARIAN SECTION ON MY OWN!!! The 30th of December! It went really well. Dr. Nuwas was my assistant and he guided me really well... The baby was already dead in the uterus so there was not so much damage I could do to the baby. Sad story really, the mother had all together 5 babies but only 1 of them is alive. But it was very good practice. The head was far down since she tried to deliver vaginally but I managed to get it up nicely.

And this morning I did my second cesarian with my favorite "doctor" Zakaria! He really lets me do all kinds of things, will miss him alot! This baby was alive! And also this cesarian went well... I really love it! Its SO my thing! Obs and gyn here I come!

Will post a blog tomorrow about my safari to Tarangire and my new years eve celebration!! Stay tuned!

African Queen!

Picture 1: Vigdis ventilating a woman getting a VP shunt due to hydrocephalus.
Picture 2: Muddy and Per working on a 12 year old boy with septic arthritis.
Picture 3: Victor giving epidural.
Picture 4: Muddy and a malnurished child with hydrocephalus.

Oh yeah!! I rocked operating theatre today... or at least I had a lot of fun! I will miss "my people" so much! Dr. Zakaria, anaesthesists Paulina and Victor, scrub nurses Juliana and Muddy, and of course Vigdis! And everybody else.

Today I did my first surgery on my own! Bilateral orchidectomy (fjerning av begge testikler), and i LOVED it! After that I assisted on tuboplasty. A woman that could not get pregnant, we opened her tubes. Hopefully she will get pregnant now.

Tmr is the big day! Safari here we come! Hope everything will go smoothly. The roads are pretty bad nowadays since its been raining alot. So please pray for us! We dont want to die yet, we are far too young! And me, Per, Clement and Muddy still dont have a place to sleep. Really hope something will show up, I dont want to sleep in the car or in a tent in the safari park. Please give me a hotelroom!!

Another thing, people keep writing to me on facebook. I DONT have facebook here. So please dont be mad that i dont answer!

Peace out for now!

Pole sana...

Some pictures from christmas eve and my trip to Lake Basuto

Yesterday was another horrible day in the operating theatre… At lunchtime we got to know that some people that were attacked by a hyena would come very soon. When we came back from lunch the people had arrived. It was actually a family that had been attacked by a crazy hyena with rabies. The hyena had gone into their house at 1am at night at attacked them. The small daughter was killed at the spot, the parents got fingers and hands bitten off and the 5 year old son was in a horrible condition. His arm was more of less bitten off, only thing still intact was the flexor tendon. So his hand was amputated. He was also bitten in the thigh, but the worst was his face. From his eyebrows up the back of his scalp the hyena had taken a big bite, skin and flesh was missing. Also an area of his scull was missing and you could see straight into his brain. So this child is not expected to live… really tragic story. I usually don’t have problems looking at disgusting things, but this was too much for me. I just had to turn away, have never seen anything that horrible in my life. I have some photos but its not so appropriate to publish them on internet like this… but if anyone is interested, just let me know.

There’s also this young girl, 23 years old. She most likely has a soft tissue tumor, sarcoma, that are eating up her face. She has an open cavity into her tounge and pharynx, no nose, lips or cheeks left. Cant belive she waited 1,5 year to go to the doctor. Now she probably just has a few months left to live…

Enough of the bad news! There are also some good ones! I have decided to go on a safari on new years eve to Tarangire national park. We will look at some animals during the day and celebrate new years in the evening inside the park. Really hoping for some good food and drinks! Have been missing that! I am going with Vigdis (anathetic nurse), Bjørg (scrub nurse), Stine (Bjørgs daughter), Per (retired surgeon), Clement (Tanzanian that used to live in Norway and speaks Norwegian) and Mohammed, my favourite tanzanian scrub nurse! Will be a lot of fun I think! We will drop Bjørg, Vigdis and Stine off in Arusha the 1st of January. They are flying to Zanzibar. Me and my boys will spend the night in Arusha or Karatu before we head back to Haydom and more surgeries!

Rain, rain and rain again...

A small update of the minor things that have happened the last week. I usually don’t have so much time to write but now it’s a long weekend and I am trying to take some time off. And its raining so I cant go out... boring!

Last weekend I went on this piknik with Clement, Martina and Victor to Lake Basotu. It was really nice. We ate grilled catfish and chips and just chilled. We also saw 3 craters made of meteors and we visited a datoga family. That’s a tribe that lives in really primitive houses. Somehow we picked up these 2 datoga women on the road and drove them home and that’s how we got invited into their house. Not bad! Can’t say they smelled so nice though…

Sunday was the big confirmation day in town. I was invited to the confirmation of one of the anaesthetists, Youtham’s, son. First there was a 4 hour ceremony at the church. Crazy. Luckily I came 1,5 hour too late and I went home to have lunch after 1,5 hour. Smart move! After that we went to Youthams home, ate some African food (surprisingly they had spoons so we didn’t have to eat with our hands) and met a lot of nice people. Next time I will drop out of the church thing and go straight to the afterparty, that’s for sure!

Christmas eve is a day with a lot of things going on here. After the morning rounds we all divided into the different wards and were we sang some Christmas songs, gave the patients some tee and cakes and just celebrated with them for a while. I decided to go to Lena ward which is the pediatric ward. I brought a lot of balloons and pens to give out to the children. Was a lot of fun!
We were told that Christmas eve was going to be the nicest Christmas ever in the guesthouse were we eat our meals. We got a lot of Christmas decoration that we decorated together with the people working there. It really looks like a collision of American, Norwegian, Chinese, Hawaiian and African Christmas. A lot of blinking lights and crazy colors, it really looks like shit but its also cosy! We were expecting this supernice dinner with pork meat, potatoes, carrots, sauce, surkål and much more. (That’s what we were told we were getting!) Dinner was served at 7pm… and what did we get? Fiskegrateng og surkål/A nasty fish dish and sour cabbage. (And that’s not the good fiskegrateng we get in Norway, NO, this is some disgusting spaghetti fish shit.) We didn’t get potatoes or anything. SUCH a disappointment. But we made the best out of it and we had a lot of fun. I got a present from Magne (he is a 70 year old plummer, really nice and funny guy) that said: To Kristin, From Him. And it was this really ugly ring with some green paint on and in the middle it said: LOVE. Funny! Still, I were it every day! Here in Tanzania they think its really pretty.

Other than that its raining and raining here. Today I am going in another confirmation but it needs to stop raining! Cant walk several kilometres in this weather. Yesterday I went to Clements place, watched a movie and had a small party with him and his friends. He lives 2 km from the hospital area and there are no taxis here and its not safe to walk alone in the dark. So I got this ambulance driver to take me in his ambulance car. And more than money he wanted alcohol. Yes, he drinks and drives an ambulance. Crazy. What can i say... This is Africa!

My christmas gift

1: The result and my Pepsi treat!
2: Baby Cristiani and Mama Bertha

23rd of December I scrubbed in on a surgery with doctor Zakaria. It was supposed to be a psoas abscess. Usually he lets me be the surgeon and he is the assistant, but luckily this time he opened up and did most of the work. When we opened up we found some old blood, so we figured it might be a hematoma in stead on an abscess. Suddenly it started to bleed a lot and Zakaria pulled out a lot of debries from inside the woman. Then she started to bleed even more. I have never seen so much blood in my life. I looked at the things he pulled out and it looked a lot like vessel wall… So… aneurysm, not an abscess! The bleeding continued and the woman went into shock very fast. And I understood where this was going. I started feeling very bad, felt really pale, started to feel cold and sweat, my vision got blurry… so I sat down for a while, and then 2 other experienced surgeons came to try to repair the aneurysm. The woman died, she was only 38 years old… Would not have happened at home.

In the other operating theatre another woman was also bleeding out. She just had a cesarian and she went in shock before the baby got out. So the baby was not doing very well and just accidentally I passed by after the baby was out of the uterus. He had an OK color, but was completely floppy and didn’t cry. And the nurses didn’t do anything about it. So I started stimulating him and we did the suction aspiration. And after some time he got better and in the end he cried a little as well.

The mother was sutured up and sendt to ICU. At the ICU the bled very heavily from her vagina and the nurses there sent her back to the operating theatre. She went into shock and she was intubated, and she kept on bleeding. In the end they decided to take out the uterus. A little bit too late I thought… nobody thought she would survive. Her bloodpressure was so low it was not possible to measure it and she started gasping for air like people do just before they die. So I just left, I didn’t want to see another young mother die on the table that die. There was no doubt in my mind that she would die.

Later in the evening I heard that she had been transferred to ICU again, and she was barely alive. They didn’t think she would make it unless she got some more blood transfused. She already got 1,5 liters from her relatives. Here in Tanzania there is no blood bank, the relatives have to provide the blood. So everything was used, no more blood left. And she would probably not make it without another half a liter of blood. So I checked her bloodtype and I was pretty sure we had the same; A +. At 8pm I went to the laboratory and told them I wanted to give blood to this woman. They said; No problem, hamna shida! I waited, they tested my blood, A +, HIV negative. Then they said I should come back in the morning since they didn’t have all the necessary equipment. I begged and asked if there was no way I could give blod today. Then another woman came and asked if I could buy then sodas. So I asked if I could give blood if I bought them sodas. No no, this is not how it works, they said. But I still bought them sodas and after that it was no problem and I could give a bottle of blood. When I was done I took the blood to the ICU but there they said it was not necessary, her haemoglobin was 8,0. I really wanted her to have the blood as soon as possible since it was so fresh. So I stopped by the doctor that operated her and she also wanted her to have the blood now since the platelets and coagulation factors were still good to go and that’s what she needed. So she got my blood. The next morning when I came, she was extubated, she produces urin, she could talk a little bit. My Christmas miracle! Really amazing! And now they have named the little baby boy after me: Cristiani! Today I have him some baby clothes and I have decided that I want to support him with some money every month so he can have a good education.
So my only Christmas present this year was a bottle of blood! But it was the best ever! 4 children still have a mother and her husband still has a wife.

Straight after I gave blood Dr. Zakaria called me asking if I wanted to assist on a Cesarian. So I went there. Pale as a dead body, but of course the blacks think I am pale no matter what so they didnt notice. I pulled through but it was really good to go to bed that night.

Mzungu life!

Picture 1: Disgusting food at the marked.
Picture 2: Soda time at the marked!
Picture 3: The marked
Picture 4: Singing at the doctors-meeting

Another week is finished. Don’t think I will go to the hospital this weekend, really exhausted. Last few days hasn’t been that exciting at the hospital really. Just a bunch of cesarian sections. Now I have somehow ended up being in charge of the labour ward. Its ok and I learn a lot, but I really feel stuck there. I would rather spend my time in the operating theatre.

Thursday we went to a big marked 7 km outside town. Didn’t buy anything, but it was interesting to see. They sold a lot of used shooes and clothes, tobacco mixed with cowdirt and stone, grilled meet, maize-beer, cooked intestines with bloodsauce. Pretty nasty. There was even a Tanzanian woman that liked my legs so much that she wanted to touch them and marry me! I politely said no!

Yesterday I had dinner and drinks with 3 Tanzanians, Clement, Victor and Martina. Good food, good company! Can’t complain! After that I went for a beer with the Norwegians Vigdis and Magne. Good start of the weekend. Today me, Martina, Clement and Victor are supposed to go to Lake Basuto but the car we were supposed to borrow broke down. But now we got to borrow another one so I guess we will be on our way soon! Thank god I was exposed to some African Time in Hungary! (And then I am especially thinking about Enddie!!) If not it would have been hard for me here!

Other than that we are now practising our performance for Christmas. Every ward have their own thing they show at the Christmas celebration. And the doctors and clinical officers are singing a song and doing some dancemoves. So nowadays the morningmeeint consists of 10 minutes of information about newly admitted patients, and then 20 minutes of singing and dancing. This guy always comes in after a few minutes with this big ass keyboard on his shoulder and he starts playing this bad discobeat! And we have to sing, and we sing in 3 different groups with different tones. Its actually nice. The Tanzanians really can sing. I cant!

Sunday I am invited to a confirmation to a 16 year old boy. He is the son of one of the anesthesists in the operating theatre. Can be interessting! As long as I dont get any badly cooked goatmeat I am good to go!