On To Tenwek

Uncle Mike and I had to wake up to an alarm clock this morning to make it to our breakfast and load the vans for our trip to Tenwek. So as I jumped into the shower first I was alarmed to find out that there was no hot water in the new guest-house that was just opened a month ago. So as I was gasping and complaining during my ice-cold shower (and Mike was laughing making fun of me as he always tends to do) I just assured him that I'd take great pleasure in doing the same to him when it was his turn.

Little did I know that the key to getting hot water in the shower was turning on (what I thought was a "light switch") on the wall in the other room. Needless to say, he was very shortly singing in the shower and the bathroom was filling up with steam. The only thing that kept running through my mind was, "I hate you Mike Liske".

After a delicious hot breakfast we were on our way to Tenwek Hospital through the great Rift Valley. It was rainging when we started our trip and it was so over-cast we couldn't see anything of the Rift Valley, which was unfortunate for the first-timers in the van. Especially since this is the most rain they've had here in 10 years and it's the greenest it's ever been.

The drive was very enjoyable and I got a lot of insight from our driver Steven (see picture above) on customs and the different tribes in Kenya. More unbelievable stuff that I'll be sharing in future posts.

Once at Tenwek, as Mike and Joe went to start seeing their clinic patients that were lined up out the door and down the hallway the rest of the team and I started preparing the cardiac OR for our first case on Monday.

We pushed wooden carts from the basement up to the OR and the team helped me organize all the perfusion supplies. The "second wave" of clinicians are arriving tomorrow, and I just received word today (THANK YOU KERRY!) that some specialized tubing packs that we designed and built for cardiac cases at Tenwek made it to Nashville in time for the staff to bring with them tomorrow. So this week of cardiac cases will be much easier and much more enjoyable for the 2 perfusionists here. Everything is coming together nicely and we all know why... Thanks for all of your prayers and support. It's been great hearing from each and every one of you.

It's 11 pm and I'll see you tomorrow.