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| In case anybody wanted to know, I'm home...got into Charlotte at 11:45pm, but one of my pieces of luggage did not arrive with me. So after waiting in line for 45 minutes to tell someone at American Airlines that it was missing, we came home. So we got to the house at around 2am. Fun times. It;s good to be home, though. :)
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| Well, I can add something new to my list of "strange foods eaten." Aimee and Mariah and I split a toasted grasshopper between the three of us yesterday just before lunch. It didn't necessarily taste bad, but it wasn't super good either. I also got my hair braided by a Cameroonian lady yesterday. It took two and a half hours and hurt like crazy but it looks cool and now I don't have to do anything with my hair for the next week or two or three. :) I was in the OR again today and scrubbed on two cases, and took lots of pictures. I also have pictures of hair-braiding and grasshopper-eating but I'm not going to post any right now. When I do post them it'll probably be to Facebook because that's easier. So if you don't have Facebook and you want to see my pictures...you should get Facebook. :)
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| Well, probably most of the people who read this already knew this, but I'm in Cameroon with my family. Yay! :) I went down to the hospital this morning and was there from 7:30 until almost 1. For the first two or three hours I followed the doctors (one American doctor here short-term, and 5 African doctors - 3 Cameroonian and 2 from Madagascar) that are still in their residency, I think) on "grand rounds." That was pretty interesting, and I learned some stuff too. Then Dr. Herrik (the chief resident) showed me around the operating room and introduced me to everybody there. For about an hour or so I helped some of the OR staff make cotton balls (with gauze and little rubberbands which were actually pieces cut from surgical gloves) for prepping patients with. Then Dr. Cooper (the American doctor) came in and asked if I wanted to come scrub, which the answer to was yes, of course. :) Definitely different from any operating rooms I've been in, but hey, that's what I was expecting. I ripped the first pair of gloves I put on which was somewhat embarrassing, but that's OK. I got to "wash" the patient's intestines. So my hand was inside the guy's abdomen all the way up to my wrist. Cool, huh? :) And I think the surgeon (not Dr. Cooper, but one of the residents) said that they would teach me how to suture, which I'm excited about. I just need to try not to be too shocked at the things I see in the OR here...like gloves being reused, re-usable masks, rooms not being cleaned between patients (besides the bed), towels and sponges that are meant as one-time use only being washed and reused even when they are stained and torn...but then again I have often thought that ORs in the US are extremely wasteful...so I guess I'm experiencing the opposite extreme here, although I understand that it's necessary to re-use all that stuff because getting disposable supplies is super expensive here. Anyways, I'm going to be helping at the hospital three days a week I think, unless I decide that is too much and just do two days. I got to go to market today which was fun. Some other day we're going to go back again and I'm going to pick out some fabric to have someone make me a Cameroonian dress (which by the way look much better than meri blauses...these dresses don't make you look pregnant!). That might take a while though cause there are TONS of people selling TONS of different fabrics! Oh yeah, and tomorrow I think I'm going to get my hair braided. :) Anyways, that was all to say that I'm in Cameroon and enjoying myself very much so far.
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| OK, I'm starting to get nervous...I don't have my visa/passport back yet from the Cameroon embassy. Please pray with me that it comes today or tomorrow so I don't have to reschedule all my flights for next week!
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| Less than 3 days until I leave!!!!! (Ok, so maybe I still have some work to do between now and then???)
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