A heart breaker

This is my last full day here.  After rounds we travel to the Korean Hospital where one of the attendings has two private patients with trigeminal neuralgia he wants to treat.  When we get there he asks me to do them as he wants to be sure there is no problem.  Very slick and quick, except the resident operating the x-ray (C-arm) was not quite adept, but all went well.

As I am preparing to go the O.R., I get a phone call from an english speaking person who says he is the consul general at the American Embassy.  It seems there is a 19 year old girl who was the victim of a bombing and is in the Korean Hospital. She wants to go back to the U.S. for the necessary surgery, but no airline is willing to fly her with her injuries.

Luckily, I am at the Korean Hospital.  After surgery, I go to meet Nimco Mohammad Omar.  She is a lovely and frightened 19 year old native Ethiopian.  Has been living in St. Paul, MN for 6 years where she is to graduate from community college this year.  Her mother is deceased.  She was here to visit her father who lives in a town near the Somali border.  She was a right front seat passenger in the car driving down the road when a bomb went off under the car.  She was thrown through the air, the car was demolished.  She was having terrible back pain.  Tried to get up but there were gunshots, and in any event she could not get up.  She was taken to a hospital and treated for severe burns on her face, arms and legs.  She was then transferred here.  I have not yet asked about her father, who I fear may have been the driver.

I examined her and her only problem is moderate weakness in her legs which she says is much improved.  She has  a bad fracture of L1.  I leave tomorrow night, but I could hardly hold back the tears as I listened to her whispered, frightened story and cancelled all plans for tomorrow afternoon so I can help with her surgery.  I have some more trigeminal procedures to do earlier in the day at another hospital.

When I return to the Black Lion, a man approaches me and says I met you in Gondar (six years ago) and you are a neurosurgeon.  “I am also a doctor”.  Frequently people come up to me on the street with a similar story (without the neurosurgeon part) and the end of a long story is always they want money.  This fellow starts telling me in detail about the case I operated on 6 years ago (it is accurate), then tells me about his jobs since then, his wife and 19 month old child.  Then it takes a turn toward the usual.  He holds my hand as we walk, tells me his wife and child are living in a small village and he is living with his mother and is destitute.  You can guess the rest.  A different story, but with the usual ending.

Tonight I take 15 or more residents and attendings to dinner, and will have a drawing for a few “door prizes”.  Tomorrow, surgery as mentioned above, and then a late plane, 17 hours to Dulles, 8 hour layover, and then a flight to Kansas City.

I’ll see you soon.

Since writing the above, I have had a call from Lucy, an American infectious disease doctor who is working for the CDC (Communicable disease center) in Addis and saw Nimco on her arrival here.  She is concerned that no one has looked at the burns in the past four days.

Nimco from St. Paul, MD

Some more resident who want to learn
the procedure for trigeminal neuralgia

Man on left was sent to my apartment
by a neurosurgeon in Norway!  On right is a G.P. who was
translating for us

Through the remarkable networking that goes on here I was able to locate a Norwegian plastic surgeon who specializes in burns and happens to be at the Korean Hospital where Nimco is.  He was great and is going to see her tonite to be sure it is safe for us to proceed with surgery tomorrow.