Greetings at last from Phnom Penh

It's been almost two weeks since we left, so I guess it's time to post something so that you all know I haven't dropped off the edge of the world!

Posting this from Phnom Penh, in case that wasn't clear, where we're very happily settled right now. Phnom Penh is big and busy (gotta love the traffic!) and lovely.

We've found apartments for rent by the riverfront, and are settling in to work at the hospital: Children's Surgical Centre, or CSC, although they treat people of all ages. Generally we spend about half a day in the operating room or following the doctors/nurses around, and then the other half we work on our projects.

We've been both observing and scrubbing in for surgeries, and I've "assisted" in two so far: a skin graft for an acid burn patient and a cleft lip repair on a little baby. The acid burns are something else--more horrible in real life than I'd anticipated, although I guess that's partly because it's such an example of the terrible things that people will do to one another. (People throw acid on each other as a form of personal assault, because it often doesn't kill outright, but instead disfigures the victim horribly and permanently, and leaves them with physical disabilities that can be very debilitating). My project will include work with a new NGO they've set up for acid burn survivors, and I will probably spend the bulk of the next month or so interviewing (with help, of course!) the almost 100 acid burn patients that CSC has treated in the past 7 years.

It's quite amazing to see all that they can do here. The line for the clinic is long every morning, but somehow they manage to see everybody. And the operating room actually can hold as many as *three* surgeries at the same time! They specialize in eye, orthopedic, cranio-facial, and burn surgeries here. It's very important to conserve materials during surgery--every suture thread is used to the very end! They do these not-trivial-at-all cranio-facial surgeries on these little kids...and then a week or so later, they're up and running around and screaming lustily when the nurses try to take their sutures out.

Next post: some photos from our weekend trip to the southern coast.