12/07/2007
It’s been an eventful week here at work and not all of it good. I rode uncle Chheang’s twenty year old scooter to and from work all week. I found out quickly that the only thing that really works on it is the motor which starts with the first kick every time. But the blinkers, horn, and front brakes are all kaput. It is also difficult to shift into second gear. It was pretty interesting the first day with my difficulty keeping it running as I shift out of neutral, missing my turn and doing the local thing and just riding against the one way traffic, and squinting against the dust and sun. I don’t wear my shades because this moto hasn’t had a tax sticker since 2002 and I don’t want to get pulled over. Without shades I look like a local as no one here except girls wears sunglasses, they just hold their hand in front of their face or better yet their school notebook.
We’ve had a team of French physicians here performing MEC surgeries (you’ll have to look it up.) They are pretty funny, taking many smoke breaks between surgeries. One of them is a professor at a medical university in France. And on Monday the volunteers, medical students, and the French team went out on a “sunset cruise” with Dr. Jim and family. The cruise started off ninety minutes late, so it turned out to be a night cruise instead. It was a good opportunity to speak with the medical students and along with the speech therapists we went out for drinks later.
Heading home afterwards I walked the ten blocks in the unevenly lit streets. I meant to miss the central market that runs near my guesthouse, but ended up hitting it. All the shops were closed of course and there was very little lighting those two blocks. I passed a group of five or six people sleeping on the concrete sidewalk there, possibly moto taxi drivers.
I met a cute two year old with a congenital knee contracture. She moves around in a tripod, amazingly fast! She reminds me of the Spielberg “War of the Worlds” movie. She underwent surgery this afternoon.
Unfortunately there was a death during an eye surgery later in the week. I don’t know the details and don’t really want to know, but am surprised it doesn’t happen more often with the equipment and cleanliness levels here. There was some type of internal investigation of which I am not privy to, but the two anesthetists were dismissed, one of them having been here all of two days. The patient’s family was given $200 and they were all driven home by one of our drivers to their far flung village. She was around ten years old and was having an eye removed and replaced with an implant. Too young.
