surgery

Eye surgeries began this week, as did my real job.  As a reminder, my job title is "Peri-operative Ophthalmic Team Coordinator."  This basically means that I am in charge of the eye patients on the day of their surgery.  My team (three Day Volunteers, a nurse, and myself) is responsible for identifying patients, giving them a bevy of eye drops, prepping them for surgery, completing their charts, taking vitals before and after surgery, and feeding them after surgery.  This week we had surgeries Tuesday through Thursday, with about nine patients each day.  Mostly older people with cataracts, but we did have a 16 year old with a pterygium.  A pterygium is a fibrotic growth on the surface of the eye, caused by continued irritation from dust, UV rays, etc.  It's kind of like a fleshy callous on your eyeball.  In order for us to operate on them, the pterygium must have entered the patient's visual axis, a.k.a. on the pupil or iris.  Anyway, Tuesday morning was very hectic as we were still getting supplies together and figuring out what exactly we needed and how the patients would flow.  By Wednesday morning, however, we had things down pretty well!  By Thursday, Glenys, the ophthalmic OR coordinator/my buddy from New Zealand, said that I could go in and observe the actual operations.  So on Thursday afternoon, I donned footies and a scrub cap and I went in OR 5 to observe BOTH a cataract and a pterygium extraction.  Normally the "blood and guts" doesn't bother me, but it took me a little while to get over the fact that they were cutting, poking, prodding, and picking at an EYEBALL!!  Gross at first, yes, but I soon got over that.  The surgeon, Dr. Ralph Crew of Michigan, uses a very large microscope-like tool to perform the surgery.  The best part is that the scope has a camera attached which relays what he is seeing onto various monitors in the room, so I was able to just sit in a chair a see exactly what he was doing.

On Friday, I slept in.  Since we didn't have any patients, I was given the day off, which was both a wonderful surprise and greatly appreciated.  After taking care of some things on the ship, I went to a local food market with my roommate Benjamin.  Benjamin is from Ghana, another West African nation, and he enjoys making soups and stews on his days off.  After a short walk from the port, we arrived at an alley lined with vendors selling various foods: fish, plantains, tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices, tinned items, grains, eggs, carrots, potatoes, etc.  After a few stops, Benjamin had a bag full of stuff, and it only set him back about 18,000 Leones (about $4.00 USD).   It was definitely an interesting (and smelly!) experience.  Later in the evening, a few of us watched the movie "Unstoppable" in the Queen's Lounge, a nice room on the ship with a projector and screen which was formerly the Queen's quarters when the ship was a Danish rail ferry.  The best part of that was that the previous users of the lounge had left behind chips and salsa, so we got a free snack, and you all know how I feel about chips and salsa :)