Gone but not forgotten, here but not around

Hey gang. Sorry for the delay on the updates. Lots has been happening, and... well, nothing as well. I almost went to puotoshan one weekend (an island off the coast near shanghai) but had other obligations. I almost went to Yellow Mountain (a beautiful mountain range nearby) but decided to decline so I could save my money for a trip to Tibet this upcoming weekend. However, we put off the planning till it was too late to go to Tibet. I will not let my travel plans be thwarted however. This upcoming week I'm going to Hainan (basically the asian hawaii) for four days and stay in a five star hotel for free, then jet on over to Yangshuo (a beautiful mountain-lake area with terraced rice fields on the mountain side), apparently a wonderful place. So I should have lots of lovely pics from next weeks endeavors. The past two weeks have been pretty standard fair. I was without my camera for about 5 days because I'd loaned it to a friend, so I don't really have any wonderful pics to post this update. Once I get picture off other people, I can place those up here.

I guess I'll begin with work. It's my last day in pediatric surgery tomorrow and it has been a much better experience than the previous two departments. To begin with, surgery is just far more engaging. Secondly, the types of sugeries being performed makes it twice as interesting. For some odd reason, most of the surgeries have been to correct various congenital rectal conditions, all of which are far too graphic for those of you who are faint of heart. Let's just say, it's intense stuff. Today however, was a bit more gut wrenching than others. This baby girl, probably just a month old or so, was suffering from jaundice. The doctor expected it was most likely due to billary atrisia. Don't ask me to explain, it because I'm still not entirely sure. but it has to do with blockage in possibly the gall bladder or the ileum... Anyways, he performed a labroscopy today (basically sticking a camera inside the belly to see what's going on) and injected some serum to x-ray. There are apparently two kinds of billary atrisia, one intrahepatic and one extrahepatic. The extrahepatic atrisia is easily fixed, where the intrahepatic atrisia usually involves a liver transplant. There's also another procedure to prolong the life of the child till she's older and has a better chance of a doing a liver transplant, but I can't spell it, so I won't try. The x-ray concluded it was intrahepatic and he went to talk to the parents. He came back obviously agitated and said they wanted to open her up and make sure it was intrahepatic, and if it was, they would do nothing and just have another child later on. So cut her open and made positive it was what he originally diagnosed and said "ok, we're done. You can go home." He was not a happy camper. It gave me far more respect for him than I already had, because I'm sure he deals with this situation a lot in this country and clearly it always effects him negatively. It was basically the worst case medical scenario and the worst decision one could make in the situation. What a screwy country.

On the other end of things, I've been living a bit beyond my means. Last sunday we decided to treat ourselves to a nice night out. We went to a place called New Heights which is similar to M on the Bund, but a little less expensive. We have a beautiful evening view of the Bund, some really good champagne (I never have liked champers in the past, granted this bottle was about $80) and some nice white wine as well (again, same story as the champers) . Fortunately the alcohol was split 6 ways, so that made it far more affordable. Still, all said and done, I spent around $40-$50 dollars for that meal, which is a substantial amount in Shanghai. Well worth it though. All in all, it was the perfect end to a great weekend. Earlier that weekend we had an extraordinarily late night out and decided, since we were out so late, we should just stay up and see the sunrise on the Bund. Usually, the Bund is jam packed with people, many of which are trying to sell you roller skates or sketchings or flowers, etc. In the wee hours of the morning there are nothing but a few old men flying kites, old women doing tai chi, and the occasional drunken westerner sobering up to the sunrise. It was the clearest day I've seen in Shanghai. Couldn't have picked a better morning. Granted, I was wrecked for the rest of the day, going home to sleep a mere 4 hours, but still well worth it. Otherwise, things are stable. I get up at 7:30, go to work, go to dinner, go to a lounge or bar, eat some late night skewers (which are so addictive I'd almost say they sprinkle crack on them) and go to bed around 1:30. A more fast paced, rigorous and sleep deprived life than I'm used to, but it's something I needed I think. A real chance to spread my wings that I wasn't able to do before. Despite the excellent times I'm having here, I still think of all of you often and miss you more than I can describe. You are all in my thoughts and in my prayers.