Leaving Maun, Botswana was bittersweet. I had such an amazing time there and met some pretty special people. Kelly is one of the absolute best veterinary technicians I have ever worked with and Tana is one of the nicest, most kind-hearted people I have met in a long time. They have such passion for what they are doing and it inspires me. I was sad to leave them but I know I will see them again. I plan to return to Maun and hopefully I can convince Kelly to join me on a trip to a VIDAS trips in Mexico soon.
 |
| Tana, Me and Kelly |
As many of you already know I started to have a flare up of my uveitis just before leaving Maun. It turns out I have basically the same thing that started up back in 2010 before my wedding. I have immune-mediated uveitis. Last time the sequela to that was herpes keratitis which significantly scarred my cornea taking my vision from 20/15 to 20/100 in my right eye. I was worried about my eye in Maun because there are no ophthalmologists there and the health care in general is pretty dodgy so seeing a general practitioner (of which there is only one) likely wouldn’t have helped much. I was able to secure some oral antivirals from the local pharmacy but they had no topical ophthalmic ointment. If the herpes virus was active I wanted to suppress it ASAP so I took a pretty high dose and over the next week it was getting NO better; in fact it was getting worse. I was afraid to start steroid drops as that could definitely worsen the herpes. So, I had to suck it up and my last day I did surgery with an eye patch…..
 |
| Pirate Surgeon |
As I was leaving that Sunday for Port Elizabeth (PE), South Africa I decided to do some research and find an ophthalmologist that I could get an appointment with before I was to be picked up for my next volunteer project. PE is a normal city so I figured I’d be able to find something. I flew from Maun to Johannesburg on South African Airways and then had a 4 hour lay-over before making my connection to PE. I had a reservation at Admiral’s Guest Lodge in Summerstrand and they were nice enough to have a taxi waiting for me at baggage claim. So nice to not be waiting in a strange airport for a ride!
Admiral’s Lodge Guest House was super nice. I had a huge room with air conditioning (a luxury here) and a super, huge nice bathroom! I got a really good night’s sleep and the same taxi driver that picked me up at the airport picked me up from Admiral's and took me to see Dr. Barclay at the Laser and Eye Institute of Port Elizabeth. I didn’t have an appointment. I just showed up at 7:30am when they opened and they were nice enough to see me.
http://admiralslodge.co.za
Dr. Barclay was very nice and it turns out I can’t see because I have keratatic precipitates (immune complexes) adhered to the back of my cornea. Once he said that I remembered that I did have those before and those are what caused my blurred vision. It is like looking out of window that is all steamed up. He saw no herpes lesions (same as before). I was started on topical steroids (same as before) and told to keep on my oral antiviral in case the herpes decided to recrudesce. It’s been almost one week on the meds and I haven’t had much of a change (maybe 10-15% better). I”m also getting some pretty bad headaches from the strain on my “good eye”. I am going to spend the night in PE again the following Sunday and will have my follow-up with Dr. Barclay Monday morning (Jan 19th). We’ll see what he says. Hopefully I won’t have to cancel the rest of my trip. Not the way I wanted to start the new year.
As for my new project, I have been here six days now. I’m at Kwantu Private Game Reserve in Sidbury, South Africa. It is a huge place composed of three parts - the actual game reserve, the “wildnerness area” and the Elephant Sanctuary.
http://www.kwantu.co.za
The program I am volunteering for is called a veterinary internship but it’s not really a true internship. It is geared for pre-vet and veterinary students which I knew ahead of time but my travel coordinator assured me that me actually being a full-fledged vet would be no problem and I would get to assist the reserve vet with procedures, etc. What they failed to tell me is that I was going to be housed with 32 plus other volunteers that do a ecology and conservation course for college credits and they are all undergrads with an average age of 20 years old. If I had known that I honestly wouldn’t have come here. I like everyone a lot and they all have good heads on their shoulders for the most part but they are 20 and act like it. I don’t blame them for acting their age, I did some of the same things they are doing when I was 20 but I’m over it now. I don’t want to stay up and party til 1am - drinking and smoking and laughing loudly. Also, there is minimal water pressure in the shower and often times no hot water. Ummmmm……NO. I want to take a hot shower at the end of the day, read my book and go to sleep. They should not have recommended I come here. I did speak to Kwantu’s owner today for a while and he was very nice. I am going to ask to be moved out of the dorm and into the hotel if they have space. I don’t think they are full so maybe they an accommodate me. We’ll see.
There are two other girls in the veterinary volunteer project (both 20 years old), Shannon and Laura. Shannon is at John Hopkins in Maryland and is planning to apply to vet schools in the next year or so. Laura is from Australia and she just found out that she was accepted to vet school in Queensland. Our program here hasn’t been great so far. We didn’t even get to meet the vet until Wednesday. They do not have a structured program. Each day we have to harass the vet to find things to do. If he has nothing they stick us with the other volunteers or the guests to go on outings. I was hoping for lectures and more animal interaction. Hopefully next week will be better.
The vet’s name is Ru (short for something I cannot spell or pronounce) and he is really great actually. Unfortunately he is fairly new to the reserve (only been here about 3 months) so I think he isn’t really sure what he’s supposed to do with us. He is still trying to figure out the system himself. We did go to the Elephant Sanctuary one day and I got to lance and drain an abscess on a 22 year old African Elphant named Marula. She has had a chronic abscess on her left shoulder from laying down in the boma at night on the cement floor (the bedding has been backordered for a long time). It really needs to be opened and debrided which we are going to try to do next week. Ru wants to do it standing instead of laying her completely down so we are waiting for our drug order so we can do that.
Kwantu has a touch farm on the main premises near the hotel. It is basically a petting zoo. They have chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, 8 sheep, 2 horses, 2 meerkats, 6 marmosets, a blue and gold macaw, some other bird species, a black wildebeest that is deaf, a blind springbok and 4 ostriches. It is an interesting mix of animals to say the least. The wildebeest is super cool. He comes running to the fence when he sees you so you can pet/scratch him through the fence. You have to watch for his horns or he will get you with the through the fence!
 |
| Black Wildebeest - deaf |
 |
| Ostriches |
One of the marmosets is very old and is having some ocular issues. Examination is difficult (especially since we have no ophthalmoscope) but it appears as though he has a mature cataract in the right eye and maybe one is the left eye but it’s hard to tell because he has an ulcer on the cornea. We started some antibiotic eye drops in the ulcerated eye but he really needs a more thorough exam and we may take blood to get some serum to place in the eye.
 |
| Marmoset with ocular issues |
 |
| Shannon putting in eye drops |
 |
| Healthy marmoset |
One of the meerkats is having some lethargy. He is eating well, normal vitals but his abdomen is distended and it seems painful on exam. I could not palpate any abnormalities. Weird. He’s only about 1-1/2 years old. We are trying to send him to a nearby town for an xray.
We rounded up the sheep one day and injected them all with Ivermectin (some had mites a few weeks back) and drenched them with Bayticol for ticks. Tick borne diseases are a big problem here. That was kind of fun. I let Shannon and Laura do most of that since I have done it before.
At the elephant sanctuary one of the female cats had 5 kittens about 4 weeks ago. Three have some significant conjunctiitis that we are treating. We are going to try and spay her soon as this is her second litter and they don’t want any more cats there. Ru will spay/neuter the kittens when they are old enough. If we can catch any of the other strays around there we will do them too.
There was sick baby Springbok out on the reserve. We saw it two days in a row in the same spot. Ru had to ask the owners if we could try to rescue it. Usually the rule is that we have to let nature take it’s course out on the reserve. Don’t interfere with nature is a recurring theme at all the places I have been so far. The owner did say we could go out this one time and try to get it but by the time we could get it organized it was the next day and then we couldn’t find it. One of the rangers stated that he saw a couple Jackals eating a baby Springbok the day before so that may have been the one we were looking for. We drove around the reserve for 2 hours……Bummer.
It sounds like we have done a lot but we really haven’t. I really hope it picks up. I paid A LOT of money to be here.
More to come later……
