Another day at First People's Hospital in Changde. Johnny and Alfred with one of the local nurses.
Steph, modeling the latest and greatest in gown couturewear. The attached muff is a brilliant idea - handy, convenient, stress-reducing for hawkeyed circulators breaking in new medical students... We should get these on all our paper gowns in the States. Who do I have to call?All right - caution signs and blinking lights here, for all of you with weaker stomachs. Photos of a slightly more invasive surgical nature (two, to be exact) are next in the lineup.
One of my cases of the day: a big kid (17 years old) with an unrepaired cleft palate.
In a way, working on the older patients is easier in terms of cleft work. The structures are bigger and easier to see, and often their tissues are a little more generous when you're trying to get holes closed and covered up.Unfortunately, if patients wait too long for surgery, you do lose a lot of the advantages of early repairs, like bony molding and speech development (which I mentioned briefly in an earlier post). There are always trade-offs in surgery.
Dinner that night: a barbecue and hot pot place. Off to the right of the photo, behind where everyone is congregating, is the open room where the grilling was done, over a charcoal brazier. Notice the hot red glow.The young man who tended the fire was also the one who schlepped all of our food up to the second floor. Shirtless and sweaty, he seemed astounded that we would attempt to eat all of it.
Left: fresh lotus seeds, which you shell and eat. Right: butterflied chicken drumsticks, fresh from the coals. I had no idea you could butterfly a drumstick. It was tasty. Part of a seemingly endless parade of grilled foods - squid, lamb, peppers, potatoes. 
"Uncle Johnny" and his women. The young translators all adored Johnny, as you can see in the photo. They also called him "opa", which Korean girls use to address an older brother. Some of the rest of us started calling him "opa" too.
