The National Sport

All right, all right, this is a teaser-- those of you who know me well know I don't give a hoot about sports. However, archery is the national sport of Bhutan. It's quite different from archery in the US. The distances between the archer and target are quite long, and the wooden target is quite small. There are two targets at the correct distance. One team of archers stands at one target, firing at the other target while the other team observes at the second target, presumably safely out of the way.

Life is not perfect. These are powerful bows, and bows and arrows don't  have a safety, and we occasionally end up with a CT scan like this:

 

Because this is a low velocity penetrating injury, there is no tissue shearing shock wave as there is with a bullet or piece of shrapnel.  Brain damage is surprisingly limited, with a conscious, hemiparetic patient who has a pretty good chance of recovering a lot of function. His main risk is brain infection at this point. I'm sorry I won't be here to see what happens.

We continue to have problems with overwhelming sepsis. If/when I come back this will need some work. We've have now lost two relatively young people in 3 days. Very frustrating and sad. I'm not even sure what the problem is.

We have had a nice turn of events with introducing physical therapy to our long term patients. This is a really nice, low-tech intervention that may really reap some rewards:

Our PT team at work!!

I think that about wraps up this installment.  Still to come:  that final walk around Thimphu, and some final thoughts and farewells.