Travelling Graham

It seems that this week has been neverending, I worked 76 hours including two on calls. It really leaves you drained but the medical experience is huge.

Highlights included my first operation ever - obviously very simple and highly supervised, but nevertheless, everyone has to start somewhere.

This is me about to perform my first operation whilst on call on riday night of week two. I am cleaning the thigh of a man who has a TB abcess.

Once the pus is drained, Drainage of Abcess (warning, this is not a video for the feint at heart) you have to remove all of the infected tissue with your finger...

..and then wash out the hole with antiseptic. To finish you place drains in the wound and bandage the leg.

This chap was stabbed in the elbow and his brachial artery was cut. This supplies the two wrist arteries and the hand so needs to be mended! The Artery is first disected away from the surrounding tissue before the two ends are joined with tiny stitches - a blood clot destroying drug is passed into the vessel to stop it from blocking.

This man was shot through the abdomen by a 7.62m sniper rifle. You can see the entry hole on his right side and the bullet shock wave has pulled 20cm of Colon through a 5cm exit hole in the muscle wall. He was very lucky as the bullet only grazed his liver. 2cm higher would have killed him. He was patched up and the hole in the Colon was stitched.

This man was shot by a low velocity 9mm pistol. You can see that the bullet is lodged in his upper left abdomen (top right of picture). This slower bullet caused more damage as it had stayed in the body. This means that all of its energy has been dissipated inside the body.

These lovely ladies are our lifeline to the patients. They translate our consultations with the locals and organise all of the tests and treatments. 3 consultations take place in each of these small rooms at one time - good for confidentiality!

This man turned up with a massive abdomen. He had a pseudocyst in the abdomen which is labelled above. We drained over 7 litre of fluid. Unfortunately this is part of end stage cancer so although we have made him more comfortable and he will leave hospital - his future is not very bright.

Sunday and a day off, we went 2 hours north to St Lucia and Cape Vidal on the coast where we snorkled and saw many shoals of fish including stingray.