Friday Hometown Shootout -- Medical Professionals

ANGRY PREFACE  -

This blog was half done on Thursday morning.  Barclay came in and wrote fascinating captions explaining each of the pictures, where they were taken, what their significance was -- and FREAKING BLOGSPOT.COM CRASHED!!!  When I retreived it this afternoon, the captions were all missing!  I know that Barclay would rewrite them -- but he's into so many projects that I hate to ask him.  If he does sometime rewrite them, I'll repost it.  But for now, I'll post what was one of my favorite blogs until the blogger crash.  Sob sob.  Anyhow - the first part that follows this angry whine is my part of the post.  After that are all Barclay's pictures.  But the real captions are missing.  I'll make a note of two from what I know of them -- which isn't much.

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I'm so glad the topic this week is medical professionals because I've been able to convince a good friend to do a guest blog!   It is with great honor and sadness that I ask you to welcome, Dr. Barclay Stewart!

Ta DA!

Barclay is the one on the right.

It has been an honor to have him living with us when he came back to the Medical University of South Carolina to complete his studies after taking time off from his medical studies to pick up a Masters Degree in Public Health, Conflict and Humanitarian Aid at the University of London.  It's been wonderful listening to his thoughts, his tales of his trips to third world countries during those rare time when he was actually in the house -- most of the time, he has been doing rotations in the MUSC emergency room and other departments and teaching, lecturing, or writing scientific papers.  And it is sad because he will soon be leaving to begin a 7-year residency at the University of Washington Hospital System in Seattle.

For those of you have haven't followed my blogs, Barclay is a son of Karen's best friend since grammer school and I watched him grow up from a bright little kid to a man who, frankly, I am in awe of -- (he probably won't like reading that, but it is true).

Before going to the University of London, he spent a summer in Sudan, researching diseases whose names I won't pretend to remember, and looking for more effective ways to treat them.  I think what I admire more about him even more than his intelligence is his natural way of relating sincerely and patiently with everybody no matter what their age or education. 

But instead of gushing on forever, I need to turn this over to Barclay who has pulled a few of his pictures. 

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Caption:  This is probably in the Sudan where he was doing research on the spread of diseases from animals to humans or humans to humans via animals or something...

Caption:  He called this picture the "Matriarchs" but I'll bet there was more of a story than that.

Caption:  Not the best obstetrics clinic in the world.

Caption:  Although the clinincs he and his colleagues set up in distant camps did research they also treated people.  Come to think of it, I'm betting Barclay didn't actually take this one because the out of focus figure in the background looking at the laptop looks like him to me.

Caption:  I remember him telling me that families in the bush would bring urine and stool samples for one of the research projects.  He noted in this picture that some of them tied ribbons and things to the bottles to make them look more...well, like gifts.

Caption:  Dosing pole -- One of the things he was doing was teaching villagers how to give the correct dose of medicines and they made these dosing poles so the person would stand next to it and the person dispensing the medicine would know what dose to give.

Caption:   I have no idea what this is about.  I sure wish Blogspot hadn't erased
Barclay's explanations.

Caption:  This one was pretty anyhow.

Caption:   Maybe this is a case where we might be glad his description uis missing since the basic jpeg name of this is "leprosy."  

 

Caption:  It is not all peace in Africa.  Although it seems most people accepted Barclay and his colleagues pretty well.  This guy, Barclay pointed out, kind of matched his AK-47 with his outfit.  The fasion of war.

Caption:  Here's a cute little kid posing next to a bullet hole.

Barclay and friends