Thursday 9 October

I discovered that out of the three nursing staff working in room 6 today I'm from the furthest south. Catherine travelled from Oban and Annelie from a town 800 km north of Stockholm. For those for whom Geography was not one of your strongest subjects at school, that's still 200 km short of the arctic circle. The sun rises about 20m on December 22. Sunrise and sunset all rolled in to one.
And yet there the eye surgeons have developed a technique whereby they inject a patients eye immediately before surgery and the pupil dilates immediately. Thus there is no putting of regular drops in the eye for an hour before surgery no need for eye shields and much less time spent in the hospital. Sounds good to me..

So there is staff development whilst we work and laugh and have some good fun. How many of you have ever seen an eye surgeon checking instruments using the ophthalmic microscope? The picture was superb and crystal clear.

Meanwhile 30 procedures were carried out in the eye OR's alone. The advantage of having 3 surgeons working all at once in 2 rooms. Inputting data into the computer afterwards helps to slow me down when I've been impersonating the whirling dervlish for the previous 7 hours.

I found time to go shopping in the onboard shop, so there is cake tomorrow for OR. Variation on a theme but I think it's worked. The cake has risen so I'm hopeful.

Thursday evenings is community meeting, Rather like a midweek service to which all crew members are encouraged to attend. Much like a Sunday service there is worship, prayer, testimony and preaching of the word. Tonight Henry Gwami, senior chaplain was speaking about us using our gifts and making sure that we did not lose sight of those gifts. Are we really using to the full , the gifts God has given, in serving on the ship and within the community here. After the meeting there is always an edible treat in the town square and I joined with folk I hadn't met before. They are retired teachers and are working both in hospitality but also some teaching in the academy - music and art.

I'm hoping to be able to go down to the dockside tomorrow to see the YAG laser being used with the eye patients. Better go and make sure my camera is charged........