Sunday morning

It's Sunday morning. I awoke at 5:30, half an hour after my alarm usually awakes me. A rooster was crowing, of course. I slept really well in a top bunk bed. Jim has the lower. Jim Goetz is a pediatrician from out east. I would guess him as about my age. Scott is our other roommate. He is a physician who is on the other team, so he'll be leaving Monday morning.

 

Andy Farrell I think was up all night in the ER. I went over there before I went to bed to let him know to call me if he needed help during the night--he didn't call. While I was there, there was a young woman having some distress. Respirations about 30-40 per minute, general malaise. Someone thought maybe typhoid fever. It sounded like she had a pleural rub with diminished lung sounds on the right. Let's just say she was having trouble breathing. Anyway, I told him to call me.

 

No calls, and I haven't seen Andy yet. Andy works as a paramedic for Johnson County. He is a lot younger than me, maybe 30ish. Andy just came in. The woman is doing about the same. They brought in an anaesthesia machine in order to give her oxygen. You know, we take a lot for granted in the US. We have systems in place, and they work. Here in this field hospital, we have no bottled oxygen, and the oxygen concentrators don't work very well. And we only have one, with an OR, ER, maternity, and inpatient.

 

Supplies are good. It will take a while to figure out what we have, and then some more time to figure out where it is. IV fluids are running short. I'm not sure what the options are when they run out. Someone has put up a sign that says M.A.S.H. #4077. There are definitely similarities with supply problems and having to make do with things. We'll see how it goes during our first week.

 

It is 6:30 and I need to be over in the ER at 7. I'll go for now.

 

LaMar