11/08/2007
I awoke to the sounds of roosters and howling dogs again today. All from this yard I believe. I don’t know why they have so many dogs. There must be a dozen of them and they like to howl late at night and early in the morning. Nothing some shock collars wouldn’t fix in short order, but everyone seems to have tuned them out here.
Work was uneventful till Dr. Jim and Sorab, his son, showed up in the afternoon. Sorab is here to do hips and spines surgery and the rest of this week and all of next week has been dedicated to that. However, during consultations they saw a lot of other diagnoses and Dr. Jim was not pleased. Actually, I don’t know what he was expecting as people just show up in the mornings and get seen that day for a consultation. However it was quite disorganized and we all pitched in to get the medical records/intake guy on track. I’m sure he’ll go home with several gray hairs after all the yelling he received today.
A lot of them though, were here without x-rays which is pretty annoying. The intake person should have caught that and sent them for x-rays rather than having them waste an entire day waiting to see a doctor who then could only tell them to go get an x-ray and come back.
There was a man with a large tumor of the right shoulder at the humerus. Dr. Jim was pretty frank about it, that they would likely have to remove the entire arm. He said there was no doctor in the country who would even try to save the arm, but they would do their best. However, he would lose the use of that arm regardless. Being presented with that prospect was quite a shock to this forty-four year old, muscled laborer.
So what do you do? Have surgery and lose the arm or at least its use and it will prolong your life, but you’ve just lost your method of earning money. Do nothing and be able to live a few more years, but still be able to earn money at least for a while, but it could spread to other areas and become inoperable.
The other tumor case was an older man with a tumor the size of a grapefruit on his hand. Again he was told that cutting the hand off was the only option. However, he’ll be fitted with a prosthesis and still be able to use the arm quite functionally. They planned to separate his radius from his ulna about four inches distally. This allows him to pinch with those bones like chopsticks with pronation and supination.
Sorab is quite a bit different from Jim in personality and mannerisms. He’s quite a bit bigger and taller and works at quite a slower pace than Jim. He seemed resigned to all the yelling involved and appears very laid back, but not quiet or shy. I mentioned Mike Kinney to him and he recognized him or at least pretended to (they went to high school together in Fairbanks.) He got in at noon and was performing surgery at 2pm. The next ten days should be quite busy.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Good god, I feel bad for that laborer guy with the bad arm. Are all there tumors only found in Cambodia? How come I never heard of tumor-amputees in AK?
November 13th, 2007 at 10:11 am
You don’t see it in the US because people get them checked out before they are the size of grapefruits. Here the poor are waiting till it becomes significantly painful or so big that it is causing them physical problems. At that stage you can no longer just cut out the tumor as it has spread to the bone and such.
ps. Get that ganglion cyst on your wrist looked at.