Today was a bit challenging. After breakfast we headed up to the lab and continued practicing slide making. It's so cold in the lab that I have to wear a long sleeve shirt under my lab coat (I didn't really plan my waredrobe for so much air conditioning) I'm pretty good at the thin smears (or froctes minces, which require a little finness, but little skill) while Liz is better at the thick smears (or goutte epise, which require more hand coordination). I'm trying to pick up on their suggestions but am having a bit of a difficult time following in french. After staining some slides we headed down for lunch.
After lunch we returned to the lab and began practing reading slides. Although its more difficult to identify species on a thick slide (for diagnosing species a thin smear is used) we were able to get them mostly correct. In counting, however, we were not so confident and missed a lot. We read slides for a while (it takes a good bit of time because you have to count all the parasites you see until you count 300 luekocytes (or white blood cells)). After we were finished reading we went out to see what the rest of the lab was doing. Aha, something I'm familiar with. They were trying to edit an SOP they were writing about how to write SOPs (yes it sounds ludicrus, but I learned while working at Osiris that you can have an SOP for pretty much everything except maybe using the toilet). Liz and I were able to help with some English grammar, though I wasn't able to explain my other suggestions. I was a little distressed because they seemed to be laughing at one of my poor attemps at french. Oh well.
After leaving the lab we went over to one of our mentors Dr. Ogobara Doumbo. We were hoping to ask about the schedule and when we would be visiting the local clinical sites. We had to wait for a bit until he was finished meeting his other appointments. He told use we'd probably spend another week here in Bamako and visit the local sites next week. He also mentioned that we could be certified in the slides (making them, staining them and counting them) and if we did that we could help and make diagnosis in the field (which is pretty exciting that we'd actually be helpful).
After dinner Agnes (who is in charge of the lab we've been in, though she looks to young to be a lab director) came by the guest house to talk to use about the schedule (I hope Ogo didn't get upset with her that we came to him to ask about the schedule). She said she would contact the labs we were interested in to see if we could come by and spend a little more time finding out what they do. She also said we can do the certification (which apparently meanas reading 240 slides with an accuracy of 96% ---> yikes). Later she emailed us with a schedule for the rest of the week. Liz and I killed some more time by watching some hillarious youtube videos like the inmates dancing to thriller and an oompa band doing hot and cold (which is apparenly by some slightly trash pop singer and is totally more hilarious with a Ukrainian oompa band.
Intersting while reading in bed last night a found a quote rather fitting for my situation here in Mali: "being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood". That's from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Yup.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment