Compare & Contrast

I'm back in Cameroon! 3 years later! My wonderful residency program not only allows me to come to Africa for a month rotation, but also pays part of my way! Samaritan's Purse and my wonderful friends and family have supported me and my new husband Bryan the rest of the way. It is fun to see old friends, hike old trails, and listen to the familiar sound of rain on the Cameroonian-tin-roofs.

I have now been back at Mbingo for one week. The rain and mountains are still beautiful. The hospital and it's residency training programs are still an amazing advance compared to much of the country. The word "Ashiah" (see previous post) is still my all-time favorite word. Yet communication issues still abound. The system is still working out major kinks. And patients still die, sometimes needlessly, other times inevitably, still others appropriately - and all with the soberingly-loud wail of grief that sends chills up and down my spine every time.

At first I was not planning on blogging again. My first stay I was just out of medical school; now I am in my third year of residency; before I was single, now I am married. Before I was naive and fresh to overseas travel, medicine, life and death; now I am further down the one-way-street of residency and it's experiences, knowledge, and insight, as well as cynicism, stress, apathy, and burn-out. Last time I cried often. So far I have yet to cry.

There. I have done it. One week of comparing and contrasting - a lifetime to go, I hope?