King Faisal Hospital - Day 1

I'm pretty proud of my eggs. Benard (pronounced Ben erd) from KHI had told me that it wasn't safe to buy the eggs @ Kimironko market. When I asked why, he said "You wouldn't get them home without breaking the shells" (they are given to you loosely in a thin plastic bag - no egg carton). But I needed/wanted eggs. My large mouth water bottle and these small eggs might make a pair. The eggs fit in and I get them home without any waste. When I made my omelet this morning, I'm surprised to see that the egg yolk is not yellow but much closer to a white so my omelet is white instead of the yellow I'm accustomed to seeing. They still taste fine. Ike tells me that he had to adapt to the color and that there is nothing wrong with having white yolked eggs.

A new driver and vehicle drops me @ King Faisal Hospital which is no more than 2.5 miles away. I tell the driver to not worry about me this afternoon, as I intend to walk home. I'm in before the rest of the staff and wander around the outside of the facility a bit. The difference could not be more stark. This is a thoroughly modern facility, with the only CT scanner in the country. The ultrasound unit has six ways of recording - BW printer, color printer, video cassette, hard drive, 3.5 Floppy and CD. It has Doppler and 3D/4D. There is a changing room and enough linens for the entire day. The main department is using all digital imaging. They plan to upgrade the CT unit, add MRI & Nuclear Medicine within the next couple of years.

After a discussion with the Seth and his staff I go to orient myself to the location of the various knobs on the Siemens G6 Ultrasound unit. I know what they all do I just need to learn where each button I want/need is located. By noon my fingers are moving automatically to the right spot. I work with a Radiographer "Deogenes" and a student "Benard" (also pronounced Ben erd). Dr. S. is the Radiologist and he is quite pleasant and accommodating, sharing the vision, introducing me and accompanying me to lunch and then paying for it today. Throughout the day, he encourages the radiographer to keep his hands on the transducer and scan. I work one on one and have Diogene scanning most of the patients or at least back scanning.

The workload is a bit slow and we only do ten patients between 8:30 and 4:00 pm. Two of them are portables in ICU. I see about the same percentage of pathology as previously. The biggest difference is that they have Doppler and are interested in doing more and better vascular studies. The first two today are DVT venous leg exams. The patients are not the poverty level patients of CHK. At 4:00 we begin reviewing some cases and the pathology we'd documented and I walk home around 4:45.

I cooked some of my multicolor beans for 3 hours while adding to yesterday's blog. We tried but had much difficulty with the Echo students skype session @ 8:00 pm. I think that it's mostly bandwidth issues. We were able to say hi and wave at each other & I shared for about 5 minutes.

There many avocado trees along the public roads. I've asked two different people what would happen if somebody picked one of those avocados?? They both responded that it would "Be no problem, yes, sure, fine, no problem" So I ask, , , If they are free on the trees in the street why do they sell them in the markets?? They both told me that they wouldn't use them from the public streets and that they buy them.

The hit counter is very intriguing to me. I can see the cities of people who are reading the blog but don't know who it is who is following along in Cincinnati, St. Mary's - Florida and Albertville - Alabama.