Pediatric Heart Surgery in Uganda: Eight to Ten Cow Big

Monday, February 8, 2010

Eight to Ten Cow Big

One of the most interesting parts of this trip is learning new things about different people and cultures. In the down time during the day (which I have quite of bit of) we have a chance to interact with the staff. Some of the things I have learned:
1. Why many of the young school age girls have their heads shaved clean.
2. How to say "cough" in Lugandan (Colola)
3. Breast feeding works just as well as morphine for pain in most post op kids less than 2 years of age
4. For marriageable women - the fatter the better.... which brings us to the title of this post. I decided to blog about this tonight because in future posts, we will likely refer to eachother as some type of cow. I thought I would give a little background to the inside joke....The other day, we started a conversation on gifts for young Ugandan women when they get married. Apparently, the tradition is, when a young lady marries a man, the man's family must given the women's family a certain number of cows, based on her size. The fatter the bride, the more cows her family would get (a good thing). Joseph, one of the day shift nurses here, then went on to tell us how many cows each of us would earn. Krista (who must weigh no more than 100 lbs) was told she would only get one cow.. he then continued to tell another nurse (we can remain nameless) that she would definitely get atleast 8 to 10 cows....whereas we might have taken this as an insult (someone calling us fat), apparently, this is a good thing. I weighed in at 5 cow big (although with the daily breakfast buffet, I'm working on atleast 8 cows by the time I leave).....

AS far as the status of our trip - today was our last case, done solely by the Ugandan team. He came back from the OR about 3 hours ago, and is doing great, already asking for something to drink. I can bet by the time I walk by the ICU next to check on him, they will have him up to a chair..... Tommorow we wrap things up, and wednesday we will leave for our safari.... this week has flown by.

Until next time....

Sonali

No comments:

Post a Comment

Uganda Heart Project Mission

Our mission is to save the lives of children with life threatening heart conditions. Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defect, occurring in 1% of all births. With surgery or catheterization, most have a normal life expectancy and quality of life. Without treatment, they will become progressively sicker; many will die before age 5.

With the support of several donors including the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, Samaritan’s Purse Children’s Heart Project and Gift of Life International, Dr. Craig Sable has formed a strong collaboration with Mulago Hospital, the main teaching hospital in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, where the first open heart surgeries were performed in 2007. Over 50 children have traveled to North America for procedures. Unfortunately, there are over 5,000 children in Uganda and over 5 million world-wide who have treatable heart conditions but no access to care. While expensive, in almost all cases the result is a healthy child with a full life expectancy and no need for medications.

Our goal is to fund care of these children in the U.S., continue to lead missions to Uganda, and ultimately build a sustainable cardiac surgery center in Kampala through technology and ongoing education. No child with a treatable heart condition should die because of a lack of access to care.

The families and children are so thankful for the work we are doing and their gratitude is the best reward we can possibly receive. A parent or legal guardian of each of the children shown on this blog has signed a legal consent form that authorizes us to be able to display their pictures and names on this blog and other internet sites.