Oppression

Yesterday was a mild 80 degrees. Today the heat was oppressive. Sunny and 90. Luckily the power is back on and the air conditioning in the operating theatres is working.

I forget to tell about my trip to church yesterday. I wasn't sure where the church was or what time services were or even the name of the church. Opinion varied. But I walked into town and started walking in the general area. There was some pretty good music coming at the Universalist Church and told myself I'd convert if I couldn't find the Catholic church. But I kept walking and just before 10 saw people heading down a side street. What luck! The cathedral. When I entered everyone stood up and started singing. What I didn't see was that the bishop and about 10 deacons and altar servers had entered from a side room and were following me. For a couple seconds I thought the welcome was for me. But the place was rocking. The entire service lasted 2 hours, including over an hour of singing. The songs were in Xhosa, as was about half of the service. But there was plenty in English, and even the Xhosa wasn't much different than the Latin Masses when I was a child.

Today I went to Bedford Orthopedic Hospital. It's a 180 bed hospital about 5 km outside of town in the middle of nowhere. But they had 3 operating rooms going all day and did 16 cases.
Mostly fractures and infections. I helped with a few of the pediatric cases and then showed the consultant and resident how I do an interscalene block with a nerve stimulator. The patient weighed about 140 lbs. and we could practically see the groove. The block worked and I finished up the day going back to Nelson Mandela Hospital to give a lecture on muscle relaxants.