Archive for the 'Medical' Category

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Drexel University Medical Team Headed to Africa with Ascovime

Published on March 25, 2011 in Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

For the third year in a row, a team of students from Drexel University College of Medicine are embarking on volunteer mission with Ascovime to Cameroon. This summer they will work with humanitarian leader Dr. Georges Bwelle, who is a Cameroonian surgeon, to give free health care to over 2,000 patients in four rural villages in the jungles of Cameroon. Find out more about what they will be doing.

So far, the eight-member team has raised over $1000 in a few short weeks and has been tirelessly collecting supplies and medications from hospitals in the Philadelphia area. On April 17th, the volunteers will be holding an Art for Health fundraiser hosted by the Waterworks restaurant from 4-8pm. If you can, show up and make a donation to the great cause – overall, the team is shooting for a goal of $10,000 in donations before they leave for Cameroon in June.

If you can’t make it to this particular fundraiser, keep your eyes’ peeled or RSS feeds open for more events to come. In early May, likely the 7th, a Beef n’ Beer event is scheduled at a sports bar in Philadelphia so be on the lookout.

Best of luck to the fine medical students and humanitarians!

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Ascovime Donations

Published on February 27, 2011 in Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

I just wanted to thank everyone again for donating to Dr. Bwelle’s missions in Cameroon, especially those who heard the story on Dick Gordon’s “The Story” on NPR.  At the moment, he’s stocking up and preparing to start all of his upcoming missions and thanks you all for the contributions.

The jungle surgeons of Ascovime

Due to other previous donations, I was able to wire him $900.00 before Christmas to help buy supplies and medications.  This new series of donations will be essential in providing more of these expensive medications for all the patients Dr. Bwelle helps.  Again, 100% of your donations will go to the people that really need the help!

Keep spreading the word, we’re almost at 100 different donors and $5000!  Go here to donate.

Thanks again!

Managing Your Upcoming Hangover

Published on December 31, 2010 in Fun Stuff, Medical and Self Medical Education. Closed

New Year’s Eve might be one of the best nights of the year and for good reason as it is the last opportunity to rock out on behalf of the past 364 days.  While New Year’s Eve is euphoric, it comes into stark contrast with New Year’s Day – the most pounding, irritable, unpleasant day of the new year.  Of course it’s the only day of the new year at that point, but it’s also international hangover day.

The question I sought out to answer was how to minimize, cure, or eliminate the effects of the hangover.  Let me first explain generally how hangover symptoms happen.

Hangovers are relatively poorly understood compared to other disease states primarily because researchers are more interested in alcohol abuse and addiction.  What they do know is that alcohol affects your body in a few ways:

1)      Dehydration/Fluid loss

Alcohol inhibits the production of a hormone that helps you retain water and keep you hydrated called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) sometimes called Vasopressin.  Blocking the secretion of this hormone causes you to urinate more often, thus losing water. Continue reading ‘Managing Your Upcoming Hangover’

Big Thanks to Global Links and MediFree

Published on December 29, 2010 in Medical, Medical Mission to Africa and Travel. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

Donations for Christmas!

I traveled to Cameroon, a country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, this past May and June on a medical aid mission.  Upon my return, others have kept spreading the word of Ascovime, Dr. Georges Bwelle’s grassroots medical organization and have also continued donating.  NPR did a segment of “The Story” with Dick Gordon about Dr. Bwelle and Ascovime which helped bring in donations from all over the United States.  Along with many substantial monetary donations, others have expressed great interest in volunteering and donating medical supplies.

School and Medical Supplies

Global Links and MediFree have been generous enough to send two boxes worth of sutures (over 200), gauze, catheters, spinal needles, iodine swabs, as well as school supplies for African children.  This was all facilitated by the work of another small organization called Sutures Are A Human Right.  Please be sure to check these sites out and support.  Thanks again to Global Links, MediFree, and Sutures Are A Human Right!

Frontiers in Autonomic Neuroscience!

Published on September 22, 2010 in Medical, Schooling and Work Etc. Closed Tags: , , .

A great read I found this morning…

Non-Anesthetized Mouse Model for Recording Sensory Urinary Bladder Activity

Peter Zvara 1*, Andrew J. Wright 1, Kristopher Roach 1, Michal Ursiny 1, Bennett Shapiro 1, Lawrence M. Dagrosa 1, Mark T. Nelson 2 and Thomas J. Heppner 2

  • 1Surgery, University of Vermont, USA
  • 2Pharmacology, Univeristy of Vermont, USA

The goal of this study was to develop an in vivo awake mouse model for extracellular bladder sensory nerve recording. A bipolar 125-µm silver electrode was positioned under a single postganglionic bladder nerve. Efferent nerve signals were eliminated by tying off the postganglionic bladder nerve between the major pelvic ganglion and the recording electrode. Sensory nerve activity was measured in the conscious animals 48 hours after surgery during continuous intravesical infusion of 0.9% saline/0.5% acetic acid followed by 0.5% acetic acid with capsazepine (10 µM) at a rate of 0.75 ml/h. Continuous infusion of 0.9% NaCl led to a gradual increase in the frequency of sensory nerve firing that peaked upon reaching threshold pressure. Non-micturition contractions were observed in some animals during filling and other animals exhibited only minimal pressure fluctuations; both types of events were associated with a rise in sensory nerve activity. Intravesical infusion of 0.5% acetic acid reduced the intermicturition interval. This was associated with a 2.1-fold increase in bladder pressure during filling and a 2-fold increase at both threshold and micturition pressures. Concurrent with these changes, sensory activity increased 2.8-fold during filling and 2.4-fold at threshold pressure. Subsequent intravesical infusion of capsazepine in 0.5% acetic acid reduced filling and threshold pressures by 21% and 31.2%, respectively, and produced corresponding decreases of 36% and 23.4% in sensory nerve activity. The current study shows that multi-fiber sensory nerve recordings can be reproducibly obtained from conscious mice.

Full Article (PDF)

Burlington Free Press Writes About Trip to Cameroon

Published on July 14, 2010 in Medical, Medical Mission to Africa and Travel. Closed Tags: , .

Under the headline “UVM graduate discovers career in rural Africa” the Burlington Free Press printed nice follow-up article about my trip to Cameroon.

He recently returned from an intense four weeks in the African nation of Cameroon helping surgeon Georges Bwelle minister to those unable to afford medical care.

Bwelle’s base is Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, but every weekend during the dry season he and a team of volunteers head into the poorer, rural sections of the country to set up free temporary clinics. None of the volunteers are paid for their efforts, and Bwelle doesn’t have the money to recruit help. He relies on word of mouth and the generosity of others.

Full Article

An Important Lesson About Women

Published on June 16, 2010 in Fun Stuff, Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

If you’re a lady you’re probably already thinking, whoa there buster, take it easy.  And if you’re a man, you’re probably thinking this is going to be interesting…

During my medical mission in Cameroon, I have learned a great deal about the cultural differences between the Western world and Africa.  However, as they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  It seems like they’re worlds away from an economic standpoint, but when it comes to inter-spousal relations, they’re right in our ballpark.

Exhibit A: our friend Philippe came to the hospital on our surgery day, when Dr. Georges and I typically don’t see patients.  However, the back story of his plight was just too much for us not to stay a little late and fix him up.

Continue reading ‘An Important Lesson About Women’

How to Save a Life…

Published on June 14, 2010 in Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. Closed Tags: , , , , .

I’ve spent the last two Fridays traveling to and working at a small rural hospital with Dr. Bwelle.  The hospital was established by a Spaniard and his wife who were both doctors from Barcelona and studied tropical medicine.  They went back to Spain for a year and arranged for Dr. Bwelle to come to the hospital every so often to check on patients, do operations, and perform patient exams and interviews.

The Hospital Raquel Bruc de Yemessoa

Of course he does this without blinking an eye, a true selfless gentleman.  The hospital of Raquel Bruc de Yemessoa is about an hour and a half to two hours from Yaounde, depending on the weather, consequently the state of the roads.  It’s an interesting journey to get there, and on the return route last Friday, there were boys fixing the dirt access road.  They had a wheelbarrow, some shovels, and a cleverly constructed gate made of a fallen tree.  It was basically a classic informal toll road of Cameroon, of which there seem to be more and more.  500CFA francs later we were on our way.  I was a bit taken aback, but Dr. Bwelle just said, “This is Africa, at least they’re doing some work.”

Despite an amputated leg due to infection, he had a stellar disposition.

Continue reading ‘How to Save a Life…’

How Donations Were Used…

Published on June 10, 2010 in Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I’m sure those of you who contributed to this cause are wondering exactly what kind of an impact you made, and those yet to donate want to see what they can do.  As of today, $2,600 USD have been raised by the people listed here.

First of all I’d like to once again thank everyone who made a contribution, whether it was $3.00, or whether it was $300, because everything counts, especially in Cameroon.  For reference, $3.00 will buy a breakfast, lunch, and an accompanying drink, with a little to spare.  Over 50 people made a contribution – college students, teachers, friends, and people I don’t even know – pretty amazing.  Donations came in all forms as well, via internet, in the mail, hand delivered cheques, and inebriated cash donations at a bar.  So I thank you!  Let me first give you the context of how much value your donations had.

Dr. Bwelle and me: just two regular dudes

Dr. Georges Bwelle, the surgeon who leads the whole organization, is a GI surgeon at the Central Hospital in Yaounde, Cameroon, the capital and second largest city.  Yaounde has 1.43 million inhabitants, more than two Bostons, and would rank as the 7th most populous city in the U.S.  The point is that there are a lot of sick people, and that any person who works in a big city, specifically a doctor will make a substantial amount in the U.S.  It seems reasonable I suppose, there’s a lot of schooling involved, a lot of responsibility, long hours, but doctors don’t really do it for the money, especially not in Cameroon.  Doctors in Cameroon are viewed as civic servants and they are paid that way.  The average surgeon in Dr. Bwelle seniority level makes approximately $500 a month, that’s $6000 a year.  Let’s think about that for a second.

Continue reading ‘How Donations Were Used…’

A Surgical Time Machine

Published on June 5, 2010 in Medical and Medical Mission to Africa. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

I suppose everyone, at one point or another, has dreamed of a time machine being possible.

Yes he played for the blackhawks...

There are plenty of amazing things that have happened that seemed crazy at the time, starting with the earth revolving around the sun and ending with watching a Stanley Cup Hockey game live on a computer in Cameroon.  If you would have told Bobby Orr back in 1961 that he could watch the Blackhawks win the Cup while on safari in Africa, he put you in a straight jacket himself.  And not just because he knew they wouldn’t win another cup until 2010, hopefully.  So one day I asked my buddy Ian, who publicly goes to school in “Boston” (his polite way of not saying MIT), is it possible in the most ridiculous sense that a time machine could ever be invented?

He said no, and then proceeded to explain the scientific reasoning why we’d have to travel faster than the speed of light or something, don’t quite remember, or comprehend.  I probably was just demoralized when he denied my dream of living history.  However, I am here to inform everyone that there is a back door to a time machine, traveling.

Dr. Georges starting operating at 6pm, and when I saw his first patient on what looked like a wider ironing board, I thought to myself, “This must have been just what surgery was like back in World War II, maybe even earlier!”  Frankly it’s not that much of a stretch.  The operating room had two tables (still resembling longer, wider ironing boards) separated by a makeshift curtain.  The room wasn’t equipped with lighting, so one of our guys Etienne, installed some electric circuitry a now there was a lightbulb dangling above one of the operating tables.  The other table was lit was a plugged in flood lamp.  The room had one window, two geckos, a door, and a tin roof.  The roof had been heated up by the sun so much during the day that it now felt like it was heating the operating room to an unbearable temperature.  Maybe it was that 12 people were in the OR.  And the walls were cement through and through.

Continue reading ‘A Surgical Time Machine’