Wednesday December 17, 2014

I woke up, had some Kix cereal and some instant coffee for breakfast (breakfast of champions).  They had CME that morning - a lecture on proctology from Dr. Cosman.

Met with Dr. Marrone in the nursery to go over how to round on the babies and use the electronic health record.  After rounding on all the babies in the NICU and the nursery, we also helped out Sergei, one of the russian pediatricians (also a critical care physician back in the US and hilarious sense of humor) who is helping on a high-profile child case that made the local papers - NU'UULI FAMILY PRAYS FOR THE GIFT OF LIFE THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON.   Very sad case.

During lunch, I went back to my apartment and made a sandwich.  I was able to connect to the wireless - but it did not connect to the internet.  I tried many different things, but all I got was a message saying the router needed to be restarted.  I called down to the hospital to ask if they knew anything about it (the welcome packed from the hospital told me to call that number for help with the wifi), but they did not know anything about there being internet in the apartments.  They suggested that I call bluesky internet and work it out with them.  

You might be wondering why I'm so concerned with internet - the 17th was my wife's birthday, and I had yet been able to contact her.

That afternoon, I was in the nursery again with Dr. Marrone until 6pm.  Very tedious, but he is really cool to work with.  He is a US trained pediatrician from California.  He graduated from residency in the 90's, and has been in American Samoa for over 13 years.  He is single, has a very interesting sense of humor, and loves to play poker.  He can speak some Samoan language, and has been teaching me various phrases. 

There was a "Code blue" cardiac arrest.  A man with a history of stroke went into cardiac arrest.  There are no heart or stroke specialists on the island, so you are basically screwed if you have a MI or stroke. The code lasted about 20 minutes, and the patient died. 

Later that evening, I was invited to watch a breech delivery by Dr. Kareem, a young OB doctor right out of residency.  He is from Indiana and is working at LBJ to pay off his loans.  The baby was born slightly floppy and had to be resuscitated briefly. Dr. Marrone helped me, but this was technically my first newborn resuscitation thanks to the fact that we no longer do NICU at HCMC with our residency program. 

I went to the cafeteria that night for food, and then went to sleep.