Friends, Food, and a Fantastic Case

This will be our last blogpost from Chogoria so we thought that a potpourri might be interestiing.......

These "hugs" from our grandchildren Stella, Dexter, Lincoln, and Edison go
with us on all of our mission travels to keep us company. We miss them!!!!

Jim Ritchie is an ER physician here - he served 25 years as a Navy doc before
transitioning to the mission field. His wife Martha is the hostess/hospitality
person for the base and has been a huge blessing for us! Their son James
is the last of their 6 children who is at home.

We enjoyed getting to know Alex Lea, a 4th year med student at the Medical University of South Carolina, Greenville
campus. He is from Nashville and looks forward to studying Family Medicine.

A mission trip would not be complete without a running picture! To the left is Dave Klee, a Family Medicine faculty from
Traverse City. Next to him is AJ Pinney, a Family Med resident. Next to me in the red shirt is Larry Smith, serving
here after practicing in Anchorage, Alaska for a number of years. By the way, Larry has done some ultra marathons -
50  to 100 mile jaunts that make my knees ache  just to think about them !!!

On the way to morning hospital duties, we look down on a courtyard filled with students decked out in their uniforms.

Susie is a kitchen magician!!! This is "BRC" - beans on rice with cheese- along with sliced carrots and mango for dessert.
Vegetables here are plentiful and we have mango or pineapple nearly every day - Yum!!

Another fantastic meal - lentils/dal to the left, Kenyan black beans (njahi), and sauteed chard with onions.

   
                                 
and finally, the interesting case.......

This is a CT scan view from a 43 year old man with a 3 month history of weight loss, night sweats, and abdominal swelling.
He looked chronically ill and his liver was HUGE on examination.
An ultrasound showed cysts in his liver and the CT (above) reveals 2 massive cyst/abscesses occupying much of his liver - they are the darker circular areas. The possibilities that we discussed were liver abscess due amebiasis or echinococcus and he was started on meds for both diagnoses. 

The next day, Jason Brotherton, an Internal Medicine-Pediatrics doc, inserted an indwelling drainage catheter into the liver.
He withdrew 500 cc (about a pint) of thick dark fluid which was sent to the lab for analysis. The following day, we took out another pint of fluid. There's plenty more .......................