Saturday, January 11, 2014

Another lush, gorgeous walk en route from the hospital to the vegetable market 
We get creative specimen jars. Ginger & I actually had to smash one of these open to get an over-stuffed lumpectomy specimen out!

8.5 kg uterus with an impressively sized degenerated leiomyoma

This fallopian tube is filled with necrotic material and most likely TB

John, one of the histotechs. He promised share some of his "mother-tongue" music with us

Phyllis, hand-staining slides.  She reads about the metabolic cycle of micro-organisms in her breaktime at work.

Fractals!

Beginning of Mt Longonot
We had a pretty good first full week.  Everyone is over their illnesses and ready for a hike!  Had good cases, not too many, but lots of challenging cases requiring some photos heading across whatever those waves are too home.  Thanks to Emily, Will and faculty for advise.  Though, we had pretty good suspicions, it's nice to have them confirmed!  Including 3 leukemias, a probable myeloid metaplasia/myelofibrosis (on a blood smear ?!), more hard pediatric neuro cases  (medulloblastoma versus lymphoma, thalamus mass that's neural and cellular, but type?).  Dr.  Albright, the pediatric neurosurgeon, stops by every day and really expresses appreciation for our help and "collaboration".  Dr Axelson - a hem-oncologist, is here for the 3rd time.  I did go to help with a bone marrow aspirate.  Was hard to witness, painful procedure, I wished (wish) I could speak Swahili!  I finally asked one of the people there to console the man.  After 20 minutes of grinding on his iliac crest, I said I think we have enough info with the blood smear and lymph node aspirate to be pretty confident he has CLL (chronic lymphocytic leukemia), so they desisted.    As we were leaving the lab, we ran into Dr. Albright, who mentioned 2 more cases, one of which we hadn't seen, so we headed into the Theater (operating room) asking for the specimens.  Nicole headed back to "gross" them in.   Our exciting Fri night was leftovers and early to bed to prepare for 7:30 (well, African time, so 8) departure for Mt Longonot.
Mount Longonot!! An inactive volcano with central caldera, near Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley. Saturday's hike.
Mt Longonot is NOT an easy hike (as mentioned before).  It is treacherous, hot and LONG.  Getting to the top of the rim is just the beginning!  Mom went a while, but decided it was too much so loaned her knew hiking poles to me (Rochelle).
Rochelle maneuvers the steep and technical crater rim, carved by people and clearly by water trying to find the fastest way down.


Tab = pure refreshment. Brought with love from the US

At the summit, before we realized that going down would be at least as difficult as going up!

We wanted to photo the donkey pulling all the kids - but got even better, a ride in exchange for a few pieces of candy!
Cooling off in the pool felt SO good! after the 5 1/2 hour Longonot hike!
Philip witht he scarf "it's cold".  Typical grocery store.
Ah, dinner, we didn't even mind the 90 minutes wait for food.  Great end to a great day!

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