I’m still not sure what day it is or time zone it feels like, but I’m back in Boise after a drive from western Kenya to Nairobi over a washboard dirt road that would ruin the kidneys of a way younger body for over 6 hours, and were it not for my trusty schemagh, lungs full of dust; a flight to Cairo, then one to Frankfurt, on from there to Chicago, and finally in the wee hours landing in Boise, ID. It was a long haul from a life transforming week, that I will post images and tell a story about here when I am more rested. I am grateful to Dr. Mark D DeLacure for choosing me to be part of his head and neck surgical team, and on the first day his only surgical assistant; in a place where the kind of services we provided just are non existent. I hope I can express well in the next few posts what it is like to work across the operating table from someone like Mark. A man whose skill sets are beyond common description, and who possess a knowledge and experience level that allow him to calmly deal with the most difficult of situations. His focus on the patient and the current surgical problem is almost laser like, and keeping up with the speed with which he operates (because of familiarity with the anatomical terrain and likely thousands of surgeries in his mental and muscle memory) can be daunting. I will never quite be the same, nor will the people who he and I touched.