Craptastic week redeemed

After a craptastic week prior, last week was bloody good fun. With fellow volunteer Elizabeth, I wandered out to a new, quiet place in Boudha, the monastery Kopan, where I may take a 10-day course on meditation in a few months. I attended yoga class by myself (i.e. without the five other volunteers from the clinic) and felt very independent. The opportunity arose to perform a pleural effusion needle biopsy, and the doctors had me do it. And I did an EKG on a dead woman.

I could suspect that I was called to do the EKG because no one else wanted to touch her, but I’ve been called on to do every subsequent EKG, too, so it wasn’t just the dead part that freaked them out. As it turns out, the nurse who usually performs the EKG is on holiday, and, of the four physicians, one medical student, and three nurses on the premesis, I was the only on who knew how to do an EKG. And that’s only because the French volunteer doctor had given me a lesson two weeks’ prior. I guess it’s true that on-the-job training is often the way things are learned.

I’ve now given my second teaching on women’s health, although the first was more lively than the second, I think the material about menstruation needed covering in order to continue. Now to choose a topic for next week… I hope to have my women’s health book from home, via California and Bangkok in time to choose a subject; otherwise maybe I’ll have them write down the questions they’re too embarrassed to ask and then pick them out of a hat and answer them. Or something. Any ideas, fair readers? If so, send ‘em along.

In Nepali news, businesses were shut down today in a show of solidarity, and to make a point about needing increased security, after one shop owner was killed and the other wounded Friday night. Oy, just as the bandh on the Terai ends, there's trouble in Kathmandu. Never a moment of peace. But, the hydropower plant has come back on full-force, so load-shedding has been reduced by 1.5 hours each day. Too bad those hours fall when most of us are sleeping. I think we're just been flipped off by the power company!

P.S. – I’ve decided it’s not bed bugs that have bitten me, as I have had no new bites for several days. My latest theory is invisible mosquitoes.