Spring is here!
Written by Antje on February 16th 2013 21:05
Winter in Bangledash has officially ended. February 13 was the first day of the Bengala month Phalgun which is the beginning of spring. Several women celebrated this by wearing yellow or orange clothes. Spring weather can also be seen. Temperatures during the day are between 20 and 25 degrees and at night they go down to 20. While I am writing I hear the crickets and frogs in the fields.
In the last two weeks the land has changed dramatically from dry fields (see the lower front of the picture) into irrigated and planted rice field. I continue to be amazed that 2-3 men working manually plant these plots of land full with rice plants in an hour. There is less dust in the air. But the down side is that mosquitos love still standing water and because it is dry season they can multiply nonstop!
Regarding my work, this week wil be a rather busy one. A team of urologists is coming. We hope to operate on 25 patients. In addition to overseeing these operations, I will be responsible to make sure the surgeons are fed and housed, that the operation room personel are treated properly and that the surgeons use our hospital supplies wisely. Then of course the normal work continues. I will be wishing that I could be in 3 places at the same time!! On the other hand this is only for 4 days and then we hope to have many patients that have been helped.
The patients with burns, that I wrote about the last time, are all doing reasonably well. A 7 year old girl had healed well and was able to go home. This week I transplanted skin on 2 women and I hope and pray that the transplantation takes. If it does then they are well on the way to recovery. If it doesn't take then I will try again in a few weeks. Fortunately there are no new patients.
I'll write after the urologists leave and let you know how things went.
