Good morning! (0600 Thursday, 4/8/10)

Just waking up with the birds singing, cars honking and dogs barking. Ah, Kathmandu! This morning will be the quest to retrieve the remainder of our team from the airport. I have just received word from them that, similar to our flight yesterday from Delhi to KTM, their flight will be delayed approximately 2 hours. Ellen and Jason have been trapped in what we call the “transit zone” at Delhi airport – this glassed-in area where people who have layovers are kept until about 1.5 hours prior to their flight departure. It has almost no food, few beverages, only a few comfortable chairs, and plenty of mosquitoes. And through the glass, one can see the “regular” people, shopping for Duty Free, eating Subway sandwiches, buying Cartier watches, and all sorts of fun stuff in the main terminal. Jason and Ellen have just learned their flight is delayed, so they get to enjoy 2 more hours in the “transit zone”. Fun stuff. I’m just glad they’ll be with us in a few hours.

Yesterday after arriving at the hotel and freshening up a bit, the team here met with Dr. Gupta Shrestha, President and CMO of Helping Hands Community Hospital here in Kathmandu. Dr. Shrestha is the personal physician to the Prime Minister of Nepal. Apparently our team is going to have tea with the Prime Minister later in the trip…glad I brought my good shoes! More on that when it happens. He also tells me that he has arranged for the Director of Logistics from the Ministry of Health to attend our EM Conference. I am very excited for the Director to see all of the hard work put forth, and all of the enthusiasm for the EM specialty among his physician constituents.

We discussed all details for the itinerary of the trip. The EM Conference on the 16/17th is shaping up nicely. Dr. Gupta gave me a large poster of the advertisement that has been circulating throughout Kathmandu for the Conference, and it is very impressive-looking! He tells me that over 100 participants have signed up, and they are closing the registration at 150 participants. How we are going to get 150 doctors through 4 simulations stations in 2 afternoons, I have no idea, but I am sure we will think of something. Maybe we’ll add a couple more simulations… Feel free to respond with ideas. ☺ I have brought all the equipment for the simulations, Dr. Gupta has arranged the venue and refreshments, and Dr. Ramesh Maharjan from NADEM has taken care of name tags, tote bags, agendas and schedules and the like. Dr. Ramesh and I will meet Thursday to go over the schedule of lectures, etc. He has invited 4 local specialists to lecture, and each physician on our team will be giving a lecture on a specific topic in Emergency Medicine. I know they’re all a little nervous about it. But no need to be! They are each incredibly smart, professional and dynamic physicians and individuals, and I am confident that they will each make a lasting and positive impression on everyone here. It is very exciting to me to see them be such a big part of this incredibly important movement toward the establishment of Emergency Medicine in this country.

We discussed the plans for our 5-day trek to the tiny village of Wana, Dr. Gupta’s birthplace, and the village that I visited on a similar trek in 2000 as a barely-3rd year medical student with Helping Hands. I am so excited to go back there, see the familiar green hills and beautiful landscape, and also to see how much it has changed. Dr. Gupta says there is electricity now, and that because of this health camp that we are doing, it will have the most advanced rural health post in the country! We will be bringing Xray, electrocardiogram, oxygen concentrator, nebulizers, glucometers, pulse-oximeters, etc, all to stay there permanently. Our team is bringing an ultrasound to use for the week, but unfortunately we must bring it back to Sonosite, at the end of the trip. We will be collecting all the medications needed for the camp over the next 2 weeks, and Dr. Gupta has already sent on quite a lot of supplies by porter and mule. It’ll be interesting to see how much of this we’ll all be shlepping up there on our own backs on the trek, or whether we can find some more porters for hire for the rest of the stuff. If we can’t, I’ll definitely get photos of that situation!

The plan for working here in Kathmandu in HH hospital was also finalized, and as we said danyabhat and goodbye to Dr. Gupta, we agreed to meet him tomorrow at the hospital to begin work, after we collect Jason and Ellen.

The rest of the evening was spent emailing our various families with word that we are alive, and crashing. Melissa and I went out for a quick adventure into the streets of Thamel to purchase some essential forgotten items, and some bottled water. If anyone is taking any action on who is going to be the first to get sick, I’ll give you the inside track… it’s gonna be Melissa. She already opened her mouth in the shower and brushed her teeth with the tap water, despite my advisement to use the bottled water. She’s a tough one, that Leming! If her family/BF is reading this, I’m sorry to break it to you. But she’s with a bunch of doctors, and we have enough medicine in our bags to treat an entire village, so I wouldn’t worry. She’ll just get it out of the way early. ☺

Then we were off to our respective rooms to bed. At 7:30pm. I have no clue what time it is in our internal clocks, but it must be either really late or really early, b/c even the rhythmic bass of the local “trekking-equipment-shop-during-the-day, kinky-nightclub-at-night” didn’t keep me from heading to dreamland.

More later!

Sue/Team