Three more cases today. I took over Jean's circulating duties on the first and third cases and scrubbed the second. Things are starting to seem more normal, more routine.
On our second case, I found myself in a teacher role--showing the Ugandan scrub nurse how to do something I had just learned two days ago. Many of these nurses have scrubbed general surgery cases before, so a lot of this was nothing new to them. However, most had not done any neuro cases, so most of the instruments and techniques were kind of new and unfamiliar to them. They were so eager and excited about learning this new trade. I was pretty tight with my new comrades: Amina and Haba Tom.
Dr. Ali Zomorodi (theatre 1) had a remarkable case today--heroic is probably a better word. One of his patients--a young boy, maybe 4 years old--had an abscess on his brain stem causing paresis--or near paralysis--on his left side. Before surgery, he was flaccid and paretic, but after Dr. Z meticulously removed the abscess, little Nelson came out with almost full motion! 
When his mother came to PACU to see her son, she was beside herself!...and with good reason. She had never seen him move his left arm, and here he was, reaching to her with both!!! We all basically had to stop whatever we were doing and just absorb the moment...got some good pics of this one.Thank goodness, we got out at a reasonable time. We hit the pool, got a nice dinner, and finally felt like we could relax and enjoy each other's company without anyone's conversation being interrupted by pagers or anesthesia alarms.
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