First post from Uganda

Hi everyone! I arrived safely in Uganda yesterday morning. The trip here was pretty uneventful. Me and Lisa found each other in the huge Heathrow airport, by pure luck! We had arrived at different terminals. We then had about 6 hours to take the tube into London and walk around. We did alot of the tourist stuff like Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminister Abbey, ect. After we borded the plane in London they found some technical problem, unfortunately this was after I had already taken my "sleeping medicine" so we had to unboard the plane and wait 2 hrs for a new one...I slept the entire time in the terminal, poor lisa had to look out for me cause I was all drugged up :)

When we arrived on Monday morning in Entebbe, our ride was waiting for us, and we got settled in at our boarding house on the campus of Makerere University, visited the Mulago Hospital, and got shown around by a medical student. It was nice to get our sense of direction around the city, although lisa is much better at that than me. Our room that we share at the edgehouse is nice, they have mosquito nets for us, there is a dribble of warm water that you can take bucket type shower/baths with. I am just happy for warm water! After walking around all yesterday afternoon, we went out for dinner with some of the other med students staying at the edgehouse and picked up some groceries from the market.

Today was my first day in the hospital. I am spending the next few days on "Casualty Medicine" which is the tiny room where they first bring the non-surgical emergency patients. From there they go to "Emergency" for 1 day then the to hospital wards. I was shy at first, because the diseases are very different and many of the patients do not speak english, and I often have a hard time understanding the Ugandan accent, but after a few hours I started seeing/admitting patients. Already I have seen the worst ascites, had a patient die in my care of septic shock, treated/diagnosed cerebral malaria and the list continues...in other words I am going to learn alot! But it is definately hard when the treatments I know we would give are not available. Mulago is the 1 government hospital in Kampala.

Well lisa is back at the house, so I am going to catch up with her. Hope someone actually reads this ;) And I will work on getting pictures uploaded at some point