One of the things that I enjoy doing the most is teaching residents about doppler ultrasound with a hands-on lab, where I'm a patient. It was developed over time with my good friend and colleague Angie Shah, the lead ultrasound tech where I work. In fact, is much trickier (my glasses all funny so I can see the screen) to do the lab without her, as we have a great tag-team routine at home.
After the ultrasound course, we did a biopsy of a large abdominal mass and then we had tea and read some cases, nothing too exciting: normal barium meals (upper GIs) and chest x-rays. After tea, we listened to one of the registrars give a lecture regarding gyn imaging before heading back to IU House for lunch.
The afternoon was filled with more work on the X-ray truck. It's been a real team effort: myself, Patrick (the engineer who has designed and overseen the building of the truck), Phil (engineer spouse of an IU doc), and Peter (X-ray tech), as well as Patrick's staff at Wataalamu (engineering and maintenance). Everyone has contributed something to this crazy project. One of the things that you learn quickly working at Wataalamu is that nothing is wasted. One of my co-workers was a little sad that I had temporarily misplaced a tiny screw for the plug to the X-ray generator, even though it was an extra.
Those small parts we take for granted at home just aren't available here. In the picture above you can see the foam that lined the packaging for the X-ray machine. Phil harvested the foam and repurposed it to support the X-ray cassettes in their holders.
He did an awesome job, and I can't wait to see it fully assembled.