KEVIN BERGMAN’S RE-ENTRY
AND MY SUMMARY FROM THE FIELD UPON DEPARTURE
FROM MALAWI
From: kevin bergman <kbergman@yahoo.com>
To: Glenn Geelhoed <msdgwg@gwumc.edu>
Date: 5/16/03 3:23PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Return from Embangweni Hospital after eventful climax in Theatre salvaging an intrabdominal ruptured pregnancy and having just arrived in Lilongwe
dr. glenn,
glad youre back safe and sound.
many questions for you about our patients.. for
example, how did our young osteosarcoma with the aka
do? reverend lungu? dumasani's grandfather? the
csection from my last night?
really enjoyed your email attachments.
im at holy cross doing my IM rotation and have
succeeded in reintegrating into america but think itll
take me a while to fully deal with the experience.
theres no doubt that it has changed me.
i also wanted to thank you so much for being such a
generous and patient teacher in embangweni. i learned
an unbelievable amount, with lessons seared onto my
brain that wont easily be forgotton.
hope to catch up with you soon,
kevin
p.s. im sure you didnt catch ER last night - do you
have a tv? - but the doc went to war- torn zaire and
they did a surprisingly accurate portrayal of an
african clinic. now my family may have a better feel
for the environment we worked in.
- - - Glenn Geelhoed <msdgwg@gwumc.edu> wrote:
> I have just returned (late- - due to a stranding in
> London from an
> in- flight "disappearance" of a passport, which made
> a "woman without a
> country") and managed to accomplish a somehow
> efficient re- entry of
> make- up missed appointments.
>
> I attach only the "read by title" headings (Apr- C- I,
> May- A- 1, and
> May- B- 1) of the exhilarating experience in Malawi
> which is expressed by
> each participant as a life- changing encounter for
> the students of all
> ages.
>
> It is more than malaria, malnutrition, Tb and
> AIDS- - this is, again, a
> powerful experience of a spiritual richness that
> carries these wonderful
> people despite overwhelming poverty, hunger and what
> might otherwise be
> despair. It is what I call "gifts from the poor."
>
> We will be back.
>
> GWG
>
> >>> "frank dimmock" <fdimmock@malawi.net> 05/09/03
> 08:43AM >>>
>
> We have arrived in Lilongwe for a brief stop at the
> Dimmock’s from
> which I will try to send this email. The cascade
> of fascinating cases
> has continued down to the end, and each of the
> post- op patients that
> were “long shots” have recovered and are doing
> well—even the young man
> who had a large chunk of his dead bowel excised, and
> exteriorization of
> the ileostomy and colostomy as a last ditch salvage
> effort- - - he was
> sitting outside and eating Nzima and waved as I left
> last night. The
> Pastor is peeing normally after his large prostate
> was removed, despite
> multiple pluggings of his catheter, and all of my
> C- sections and their
> babies are gurgling cheerfully. The young man with
> the huge
> osteosarcoma which had broken down and caused such a
> foul stench that he
> was an outcast, even from his attentive family, had
> his A- K amputation
> yesterday, and he has lost his ostracism, being
> triumphantly admitted to
> the main Male Ward. As Kevin had said, we have
> finished our six month’s
> work in two weeks, and a look back at the “Theatre
> Log Book” shows two
> full pages with my name, which seems like the
> product of several years’
> work, all of it passing so quickly that the
> arbitrary distinctions of
> the days seen in the attached emailings (the only
> parts I have been able
> to type have been the titles, since I had been too
> busy doing it to type
> it up—but I have written the usual “serial letter”.,
> I will show and
> tell a real mini- universe of the “real Africa” upon
> the return of the
> cascade of photographs and completed stories.
> Virginia will also have a
> “show and tell” of the full program she had led
> through the Deaf
> School, culminating in a touching formal “Program in
> Honor of Virginia”
> in which they had formal speeches, presentations of
> gifts and tribal
> dance and even a formal poem spelling out “VIRGINIA”
> before the piece de
> resistance- - - the Bell Choirs performing several of
> the two dozen songs
> she had written iont scores, including quite a
> number which she had
> never heard and had to sing in Chi- Tembuka. I will
> tell more of this
> but the special bragging rights would probably have
> to come form my side
> about the music program she had sparked here,
> especially among the Deaf
> School’s very grateful students and staff. But, we
> are now going for a
> very short hop to Zambia, which is billed as “the
> Real Africa”- - - a
> safari inot the game- rich South Luwangwe National
> Park, an extravagant
> old- time big game safari for our brief exit
> introduction to the natural
> history of Africa on the kind of game drives I have
> so often led myself.
> The open question I will leave hanging is—“now,
> just which of these
> worlds is the real one?” Then, “Out of Africa—once
> again, to return
> ASAP. GWG
>