Melting point.

The temperature is slowly rising here in Muheza and the afternoons have an almost oppressive feel to them. Once the full force of the sun has had its opportunity to bake us, it gets quite difficult to do anything after about 2pm (even in theatre with A/C it is still very warm). Escaping home is a relief, unless of course the power is out, in which case it becomes a slightly less inviting prospect. The movement of air that the room fans produce certainly make things much more tolerable – in fact pleasant much of the time.

This morning’s departmental meeting was lively, and we were treated to a session on teamwork run by the Hereford trio. It was great with lots of interactivity, also reinforcing much of what we have been working on. It was fantastic to see the local staff embracing the concepts and principles of the material covered and proudly highlighting some of the changes we have made over the last few weeks.

Melted!

There has also been another triumph with the new autoclave I am delighted to report. One of the barriers to using diathermy (electrocautery – modern version of a hot poker) in places like Muheza, is that many of the instruments are designed for single use only. For example, I was aware that the diathermy ‘pencils’ melt if autoclaved (this makes reusing them very difficult as any other sterilisation methods are either very expensive and thus are not possible here, or are distinctly suboptimal). 

And Again!

However, inspired perhaps by the rollercoaster experience I have had with the mesh, something made me decide to try and put them through the new autoclave (as it runs at a slightly lower temperature). Luck would favour us, and the first attempt worked! The pencil that we had been using tolerated the cycle brilliantly. Furthermore, it is now about to embark on its 5^th journey through the ‘cooker’. I say luck, because I had brought two other pencils of different makes with me and both of these have melted impressively! I suspect that if I had started with one of these, I would not have tried again and we never would have made what might be a very exciting discovery. We have 5 of this particular model and I have agreed a system with the head of CSSD so that we can accurately monitor how many times they can be reused. Fingers crossed.

Back at home, Kate is now feverish and has had a rubbish day feeling very poorly indeed. So, I have had a pretty full on day being doctor, educator, surgeon (we had a couple more cases today), administrator (as I try to monitor and record the work we are doing here), as well as father, mother and nurse for the afternoon and evening – I was pretty rubbish at this last role with everything else to juggle. The girls however have risen to the challenge and been outstanding. Fingers crossed it will be only 24hrs of misery for her as we are due to go to Peponi again tomorrow.