We finally got to watch an amputation in surgery something that Amy in particular had been really keen to see. I was worried Itd turn my stomach too much after my experiences in derby. We watched this lady who's diabetes had gotten the better of her foot have her foot have her forefoot removed. I'm sure that in England they take time with the surrounding tissues; closing off blood vessels, creating muscle flaps to cover the end of cut bones. In vanuatu they just saw the foot off and drop it in the bin. Amy ( who was scrubbed in at the time)'s face was an absolute picture of horror. It was over pretty quickly, left open for a future skin graft, so many banages put on by Amy and Dr Ricky, and job done! A very eye opening difference to surgery practised in the UK
We've again seen a number of cases that have again made us feel incredibly lucky to be a part of the NHS, a health service that can provide so much, people can expect the most exciting medical developments to be offered to them and where there's few illnesses without successful curative or palliative treatments. Many cases of cancer here that just can't be treated without the families having large sums of money. Cases of diabetes that are terribly managed because of lack of education and cases of other life limiting diseases where there's little or no support for patients and family.
We cracked on Thursday night, five weeks at coconut palms and we haven't succumbed to ordering pudding. This changed on Thursday. We got ourselves a piece of chocolate cake and banana cheesecake and man they were good!
Our Friday ended up a long day but pleasantly broken up by a Samoan lunch. Our consultant; Dr Dyxon in between sawing feet into bins had been cooking us a feast. He's from Samoa not vanuatu so whilst it wasn't the traditional vanuatu surgery lunch we've been treated to before it was extremely delicious. We had sashimi and noodles with a special sauce, some rice, island cabbage, manioc and kumala. Mm it was yummy. We struggled to remember a time our consultants in UK would ever make all the staff lunch! Maybe it's something we should remember in our future careers as it definitely boosts morale amongst the troops
Our last weekend was set to be a packed one. We were going to watch sunrise and see the market early in the morning on the Saturday along with a trip to the Mele cascades. The weather stopped our big adventure tho. We made our way down to the market at 730, this was very fruit filled and buzzing, we had breakfast at Jills cafe, an American diner but full of locals. Our eyes were probably bigger than our bellies after our small corn flake portions each morning! We tucked into a full American breakfast and a breakfast burger. Mmmmmm.
We then decided the cascades would be better on a sunnier day so made our way to the museum. We were allowed in for free as we're working at the hospital, there were so many traditional artifacts from the outer islands these were really interesting and our guide 'edgar' explained some of the more local history. As we had just about seen all of the museum Edgar asked us to sit down as he was going to draw some sand pictures. This was another tradition from the outer islands, a story telling method where pictures are drawn in the sand that take no longer and no shorter than the story they describe. It was like falling into a completely calm state watching Edgar move his finger in the sand, not breaking contact once. He also ended his demonstration by playing a few tunes on the traditional flute and the Vanuatu national anthem on an instrument donated to the Ni-Vans by the Indonesian people.
We had a long walk, did some souvenir shopping and our last weekly shop at Au Bon Marche and headed back to coconut palms for dinner and some reading!
Sunday the sun was out! We skyped home and headed into town to grab a bus to the cascades at mele. These are the most epic waterfalls, you climb
Up them barefoot, against the force of the water holding onto a flimsy bit of rope. Something safety regulations in the UK definitely wouldn't allow! It was so amazing, there were little levels of short waterfall and then a huge waterfall feeding them all. We jumped in. Swam over the rocks and went behind the cascade of water! Such a cool experience. After ten minutes or so in the pretty chilly water we swam out and made our way down again. We sunbathed to dry off at a lookout point that had a gorgeous view over hideaway island and had some water and a brilliant ice cream!
We played a few games of pooh sticks, relatively unsuccessfully! And then headed back to coconut palms to read our books, have some lunch and indulge in a buy one get one free cocktail (we had a voucher) such a lovely day to end our last weekend.
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