Geta Eye Hospital

Now that I have my bag, yesterday I hopped on a turbo prop plane and flew to Dhangadhi, which is just down the road from Geta Eye Hospital. This airport had one runway (paved thankfully) and one building. I was driven to the Geta Eye Hospital which wasn't too far down the road, and spent the night here last night in a guest room that's been built into the hospital.

It is much hotter here than in Kathmandu (the highs have been reaching 110-115 degrees), and this place is at sea level and in the middle of a jungle, so mosquitoes and all of their diseases are a concern. Since I knew I'd be here, I have been taking malaria prophylaxis medicine, and I have been copiously applying DEET insect repellent. I also sleep with a bed net over my bed.

Today I worked with the local doctors. We saw patients in the clinic in the morning, and then operated in the afternoon. I did a few cataract surgeries and was humbled at how much better everyone here is at it than me. Just a refresher...in the US and most developing countries, we use a technique called phacoemulsification to remove cataracts. It works well with minimal recovery, but is expensive, not easily transportable, and sometimes hard to translate to third world eye care. The reason I'm here is to learn the technique that has been perfected here, called small incision cataract surgery (SICS). It is a technique that doesn't require the use of expensive non-portable machinery, and can be applied on a large scale for low cost.

So even though I've done a lot of phacoemulsification (and I'm pretty good at it if I do say so myself), those skills are not easily transposed to SICS. The surgeon I was working with today (who just happens to be the highest volume cataract surgeon in Nepal, and quite possibly the world) was able to do 2 to 4 surgeries in the time it took me to do one. It was a nice humbling experience now that I'm at the end of residency and finally feeling like I know what I'm doing.

Tomorrow I'm hopping on a bus and going to Silgadhi in the Doti district. It's about a 6 or 7 hour trip up into the mountains, to an even smaller village (I know it seems like I can't get into a much smaller place, seeing as how I'm currently in the middle of a jungle). I will be helping with a surgical eye camp, which is a 2-day nonstop surgery-fest. We are operating on local patients that have cataracts, for whom it's too far to travel to Geta. I'll leave tomorrow (Saturday), operate on Sunday and Monday, and come back to Geta on Tuesday. I won't have internet access so I'll update the blog when I return.


Just in case you were wondering, I have been taking a lot of pictures. But, the internet connection in this place (and in Kathmandu) is so spotty (eg the power has gone in and out twice as I've been typing this post) that I'm saving all the photos for later.

That's it for now...namaste (that's what they say here, I'm not trying to be a hipster yoga person).