Yesterday, I had lunch in Nelson Mandela square. Eating sushi, overlooking the 2 story tall statue of Mandela, thinking about the election, it was a damn near perfect afternoon. There was a bit of a weird feeling walking around the mall yesterday. I'm curious if other expats had similar feelings, but for the first time in quite a while, I was proud when people make some mention of me being American. I didn't wear an American flag t-shirt, nor an Obama button (I don't own either), but after months of adopting the Jozi greeting of "howzit" I reverted back to my best American accent of "howwer you?" and was sure to include the uber-american "thank you very much, and have a nice day."
Strangers had the liberty yesterday to congratulate me, be if for specifically electing Obama, or electing the first AA president. It didn't matter. Yesterday, I walked around thinking that for the first time since the decline of America's global reputation (decline isn't the right word, that implies something slowly heading downhill...) I wasn't going to be automatically placed on the the defensive, trying to defend America's actions.
Electing Obama has almost been interpreted here as acknowledgement of error, or many errors in decisions made in the past many years.
Oops, we fucked up. We're sorry. We're electing new leadership.
It was a great day to be walking around in Jo'burg.
As for work....
The pediatric consultants were back today. We did echos on the kids that the other reg and I've seen all week long. It was a bit of a proud moment, when the echocardiograms (ultrasound of the heart) confirmed most of our clinical diagnoses.
We're following one kid who has a single atria and a single ventricle, in addition to a slew of other valve and stenotic lesions. He basically needs a new heart. And he won't get one. After spending a few days on the vent, he's acquired a nice pneumonia, and now a palliative procedure will be deferred until the pneumonia clears a bit. He's off the vent, and I'm pretty sure he is no longer being considered for re-ventilation. Mentally, I pointed out, to myself, all day how unfortunate that down in the neonate area, there are likely kids there who would be donors, but there doesn't seem to be the set up for such transplantation..
Anyway, have a bit of reading to hammer out.
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