Shalini’s Guyana Blog – Week 2

Work Week 2 – Aug 13

This has been a busy week, a week of interesting cases and unusual conversations. Many things considered mandatory in London, Ontario seem almost frivolous here. Things like a sheet to cover the patient’s exposed body, blankets, bedsheets on the patient’s bed, pillows, alcohol wipes, paper towels, labour epidurals, screens to keep patients’ privacy, informed consents, safe sharps management, anaesthesia machine checks, the help of an RT, availability of blood for transfusion. Oh, I could go on forever!

Beth and I have decided that we are going to kiss our anaesthesia machine and glidescope when we return! She has also said that she is looking forward to her OB call. This one I am not too sure about and I will have to see if she changes her mind!!!

Here is a patient who very kindly allowed us to photograph her for teaching purposes. She came in for a mandibular tumour excision. We did promise her that her face would have a black stripe over her eyes. A very pleasant woman who lives in a remote area of Guyana and came in for surgery as she could not eat anymore.

Kaieteur falls weekend trip – Aug 13

We had an amazing weekend. We were invited to a Guyanese wedding on Saturday. An anaesthesia resident was getting married (to an OB resident!) and we were last minute invitees. What an opportunity to see a local wedding! Despite both the groom and the bride being of different faiths, the ceremonies did not take too long and then it was food and dancing. We all had fun!

We had been negotiating with various travel agents for a weekend trip to Kaieteur and Orninduik falls. Finally, after finding the right price, on Sunday morning we were at the Ogle airport to take the small 12-seater Cessna 208B to the Kaieteur Falls. It was raining heavily and the trip cancellation was looming on the horizon. However, 2 hrs of waiting was rewarded by a sudden clearing of skies and takeoff

There are no roads to this protected national park and the only other way is to hike for 7 days through dangerous rainforests (that many still do, believe it or not). Neither were we brave nor did we have the time so we flew over miles and miles of dense Amazon rainforest for about 50 minutes and then the falls suddenly appeared.

The Kaieteur Falls are about 4 times higher than our own at Niagara so one can imagine the absolute perpendicular drop of the coffee coloured water. I believe that they are the world’s largest single drop waterfall by volume. There is sheer isolation without any touristy stuff here. The 12 people on our flight, one pilot and one guide were the only souls (apart from the 2 park rangers and one local guide stationed there). Not even mosquitoes! There are carnivorous plants in the jungle that eat all the small insects. I was fortunate enough to see the little golden frog that was discovered in the jungles of Amazon in 2008 and had made the news. It did hide but not before I had taken its picture!

Orninduik falls were another 25 min flight away and as the falls are not deep, we enjoyed bathing in them. It then started to rain just as our time to return was drawing near. Our pilot was very experienced and he brought all of us safely back to Georgetown in the evening. A lovely end to an eventful week about which I will tell in my next post.

Cricket Stories – Aug 10

Today I will share with you a West Indies cricket experience. For those of you who are uninformed, cricket is a sport, not an insect! It is widely played throughout the world except for North America! Countries have their own teams (e.g. England, Australia, NewZealand, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Pakistan to name a few). As the Caribbean countries are small, they play as one team: West Indies and it is one of the powerful teams in the world.

Created in 2013, the Caribbean Premier League is an annual Twenty20 cricket tournament held in the Caribbean and most Caribbean teams participate individually, with each other. The matches are much sought after and we were lucky to have one in Georgetown where Guyana Amazon warriors were playing St. Kitts & Nevis patriots.

With our new found OB/Gyn friends Jennifer and Kristen, we went to the Providence stadium to see the colourful and noisy carnival last night. Remind you, Jenn and Kristen along with Beth are (or at least were) cricket naive. All three of them had a crash course in cricket, thanks to aunty ‘Google’ and uncle ‘Wikipedia’. And then it was a blast. Yours truly tried a hand at taking selfies and after many miserable failed attempts, nailed it and the proof is here for all to see!!!!

Follow Shalini’s blog at < https://traveldocanesthesia.wordpress.com/ > and see her great photos with the postings.