Egyptian Liberation, omphalocele, and Toby Keith

You must know I've been busy since it's been 9 days since I've blogged!

I have done some interesting things in the past 9 days. For one thing, I went to the Sinai Liberation Day Celebration put on by the Egyptian forces on base. There were, of course, welcome remarks from the Egyptian commander, the posting of the colors, etc, and also a video depicting the importance of the holiday in their culture. Then came the main feature: the food! There was grilled eggplant, rice and chicken, fried cheese, and - of course - rice pudding made with rose water. It was certainly a nice departure from the same-old-same-old in the military DFACs. After dinner, the dancing started. It was hilarious! Almost all of the Egyptian military members are male, so "dancing" essentially consisted of the men standing in a circle and gyrating. Eventually some females joined them, and we laughed even harder.

A few days later, I got a page while I was running around the hospital, and it was the commander wanting to know if we could take care of a one-day old baby with an omphalocele, a birth defect in which various abdominal contents are sticking out of the belly button. It took some thinking and some discussion, but the peds surgeon, the other pediatrician, the commander and I decided that we had the resources to care for this baby.

Meanwhile, I prepared for the concert event of the spring: TOBY KEITH!! His band came by the hospital during the day, and I was fortunate to speak for quite a while with the bass player. The concert was in a large tent which surprisingly had great acoustics. Although he only played for an hour (he had been to 15 bases in 5 days, so he was probably pretty tired), we got to hear all the good songs, like "Beer for my Horses" and "The Angry American" (I wasn't leaving until I heard the latter song!). It was a little surreal, because for a few moments I actually forgot I was in Afghanistan. But then I would look around at the weapons slung around everyone's shoulders and waists .... and I would remember that this is a war zone. All in all, the concert was the social highlight of my two months at Bagram. My friend took some pictures, and I'll post them when I can.

I went back to the hospital after the concert and found the baby in the OR. The surgeon feared strangulation of the bowel, so she decided to operate immediately. I sent the other pediatrician home and waited for the surgery to conclude. I ended up waiting until 12 or 1 am, and the patient came out of the O.R. very unstable. The surgery had gone well, but his electrolytes and blood sugar were totally out of whack (for you medical folk: his initial glucose was 617 by one accucheck and 430 by the other). The surgeon and I sat at his bedside all night monitoring his condition, and by morning I felt as if I had been hit by a truck.

I completely lost the entire next day, as I was napping and covering the peds inpatients as best I could while Rob (the other pediatrician) saw the outpatients. Luckily, I went to sleep early that night because we got two additional admissions overnight who would require my full attention the following day. Rob and I are basically running a PICU with 5 patients, and we also have 2 patients on the ward (one of which was only moved there to free up a bed .... she's the girl with the devastating burns, and she really belongs in the ICU). In fact, we have more patients than the adult service has! At one point, we had 4 intubated patients and one marginal, recently-extubated patient .... so let's just say that we are very busy with some pretty sick kids. I am happy to report, though, that tonight all of the patients are off their breathing machines (including the baby) and their clinical conditions have stabilized.