Pictures - Day 5 in Cameroon

 Cat that lives in a nearby house that is usually occupied by a US 

physician - it is fed by one of the workers here while that physician 

is gone, and it eats rice with palm oil.

 Patient laundry that is done by hand by family members, drying on a bush.

 The women's ward where I work - there are 28 beds in total.

From the hike - the hospital is the little group of buildings right in the middle of the 

dark green tress in the middle of the land in this picture.

A view from our hike - on the left is the family med resident, on 

the right is the peds resident, you know who is in the middle.

Cattle we saw on our hike.

Saturday - work and then hiking

Saturday: day 5 in Cameroon, day 4 of the wards today.

Today started out with the usual routine: church at 6:40am. Because it is Saturday the church service was only music. The whole congregation sang call and response-style accompanied by percussion, with many people standing up to dance.

Church was followed by morning rounds on the wards with a break for breakfast. Several interesting patients came in last night, including a woman who has been almost unresponsive for 5 days who was previously admitted to another hospital, not really treated, and told to go to Mbingo for further care. Another lady came in with newly diagnosed diabetes, which is not really interesting medically, but the thought of being a patient with insulin-dependent diabetes in a developing coutry is pretty horrible.

Some good news - while we were on rounds today the brother of the patinet who had been waiting for chemo for so many weeks actually showed up with the medication, and the patinet will start chemo today or tomorrow!

Since my last post, two other residents, one third year in pediatrics from CA and one third year in family medicine from SC arrived, and it has been so nice to have some company! The resident from CA and I are staying in the same house, and I appreciate having a roommate.

This afternoon one of the other westerners took the three US residents on a hike up a mountain that overlooks the hospital and all the surrouding land. Beautiful! It turns out that this hospital sits on a large amount of land because it started out as a leprosy hospital and none of the local chiefs wanted their villagers to be close to leprosy patients. We ran into a number of Cameroonians on the way, many of them carying heavy loads on their heads while walking up the mountain. We saw a lot of flora, including banana trees, coffee plants, and all sorts of flowers. The views from the top of the moutain were amazing! I'll post some pictures. On the way up we saw chickens, and on the way down we saw a man hearding about 20 cows with horns up the mountain, and saw two horses tied up in some tall grass.

After the hike my roommate and I went to the Saturday market and bought sugarcane (50 cents for about 6 feet of it), bananas (20 cents for 10 or so), and a papaya (25 cents). We found ampicillin, penicillin, and viagra there as well, go figure.

Thanks for checking in, and hope you all are doing well! Check back for more pictures!

-Karen

Pictures

 

A plant in the yard of the house where I am staying 

A view from a short hike I took right next to the hospital

The house where I am staying

People caring for family members who are in the hospital (each patient must bring a family member to cook for him or her and to do laundry)

Safe Arrival, Day 1 of the Wards

Hello Everyone,

I am writing from Cameroon!

I arrived at Mbingo (pronounced 'bingo') Hospital on Wednesday afteroon after a 6 hour drive from Douala (after 2 Air France flights, each 6-7 hours but with really good food and a 5 hour layover in Paris).

Douala was a busy and very poverty-stricken city with huts and markets everywhere. Very dirty and seemingly disorganized to my NYC eyes. The slum areas are so terrible looking, so hard to imagine living one's whole life there, yet set against beautiful and lush countryside. The city had streams and streams of motercycles, most with at least 2 riders (no helmets), with my favorite site being two guys getting on a motorcycle and balancing a very large drum of palm oil between the front guy and the handlebars.

In contrast, the hospital is located in such a beautiful location, very clean and orderly, all against grass-covered volcanic mountains. Certainly there is poverty here, but it is nothing like Douala as everyone in this area is employed by the Cameroon Baptist Convention and works in some capacity at the hospital.

Today was my first day on the wards, and it was quite an experience. Some of the cases today:
-Invasive cervical cancer in a 60 year old who presented with abdominal pain x 1w, found to have cancer invading into the bladder
-Paralysis of unknown origin in a 16 year old (there are no CT scanners or MRIs... just x-rays), transverse myelitis? - there are no available IV steroids
-TB pericarditis
-Cough and chest tightness in a middle aged woman, found to have massive pericardial effusion that ended up being lymphoma, now waiting 3 weeks to try to get a family member to obtain chemo from the city and bring it up here
-Swollen R upper limb post-mastectomy, found to have bleeding and massively pus-filled mastectomy site.

Also saw EGDs (like a colonoscopy but through the mouth to look at the stomach), which are usually done under conscious sedation, done with no sedative, just some lidocaine to gargle, and the patients say 'thank you' after they are done with the whole experience (which always involves vomit). Unbelievable.

Saw a couple trans-abdominal liver biopsies, again no anesthetic, an 8cm needle right into the liver, and again followed with 'thank you.'

And I went to church.

Did I mention that this was the first day?

-Karen

P.S. Having a hard time loading pictures but working on it...

Going to Cameroon!



Courtesy of Wikipedia

Hi Everyone!

In just a few days I will be leaving the comfort of NYC for a medical rotation in Cameroon, and wanted to start this blog to document what it is like to work as a physician there.

I am going to the Mbingo Baptist Hospital in Bamenda (Northwest Province) and will be there for a month. Fortunately for me, English is the primary language of the region. I will fly into Douala (the largest city in the country - larger than the capital, Yaounde which is in the Central Province) and then take a 5 hour bumpy car ride to the hospital. While at the hospital I will have both clinical and teaching responsibilities, though never having practiced medicine in a foreign country I am not sure what to expect!

Please check back for posts!

-Karen