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| My team at a surprise party! |
Just for the record, I'll tell you a little bit about our 3 projects:
1) "SToP Crypto" (Strategies to Prevent Cryptococcal Infections): this study is a clinical trial for HIV patients with early cryptococcal infections. Cryptococcus is a fungus that usually only infects people with suppressed immune systems. In HIV patients, cryptococcus can lead to serious brain infections, and we are working on comparing the standard treatment (fluconazole) to a combination of fluconazole and flucytozine.
2) SToP Crypto Environmental Sub-Study: this project involves patients from the clinical trial. If patients have cryptococcus growing in them, we ask for them to allow us to go to their homes and take samples. I'm really excited for this one, because it means I get to go out to rural villages and homestead and go into people homes and take samples of their dust, foliage, and other things around their house to see if we can get more information about where the fungus may be coming from in their environment.
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| Locks don't matter much to crowbars |
3) THINK2 (The HIV Neurology In Kenya Study 2): this is a cool project looking at people with HIV associated cognitive defects and how they affect their social and economic welfare. My team will recruit 200 patients and perform neurological and psychological exams on them and then follow them for 2 years to assess if HIV infection is affecting their brains. We will be interested in seeing if we can observe socio-economic impacts from the HIV associated dementia and impairment many patients encounter.
Ana-Claire was supposed to arrive on Thursday to watch the team do a walk through of the procedures for the THINK2 study, but when I arrived to the office on Thursday morning I discovered that our office had been robbed. The thieves pried the locks off our outside doors and took all the cups and plates from out little kitchen. It appeared that they even had time to find all our file cabinet keys, unlock all the cabinets and rummage through them.
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| The eggplant had a nose :P |
Luckily, they were interrupted at this point (it's still unclear if the security guard caught the burglars or if it was just the neighbors who started shouting), but all of our computers, electronics and valuable items were still there!!!
We were REALLY lucky, but AC was a little shaken, so we moved ALL our expensive or difficult-to-attain scientific supplies to the main hospital to be kept under more locks-and-keys. It tool us most of the day on Thursday to get everything sorted out and moved, and to hire a new security company.
The rest of the week was just busy preparation for the launch next week, but I had planned some fun weekend activities! I invited about 50 people over to my house on Saturday afternoon for a Pool Party/BBQ/Housewarming party! I ran around throughout the week collecting food and supplies, but by Saturday had made burgers, hot dogs, 2 chickens, veggie kebabs, pasta salad, potatoes, and a peanut butter-banana-chocolate cake :) Oh and a lot of sangria :P
It turned out to be a great day, and a TON of people showed up and brought a bunch of great food! We lounged in the pool, ate a lot, played frisbee and water polo, and generally had a great day. The rain held off until almost dark, and when it finally moved in we hung out on the porch of my landlords house until it passed.
Eventually, people packed up and went home, but we all agreed to meet up at the rooftop bar named The Duke of Breeze. A fun day merged into a fun evening, and I was out until the wee hours handing out with a pretty big crowd of mzungus.
I love my apartment complex, and it was great to do some entertaining. I haven't had a real chance to have people over since I lived in San Diego, so I was long overdue! :) All-things-considered, it was still a pretty productive week, and my housewarming actually marks one whole month of being here!! Time is flying by!
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| Housewarming Party by the Pool! |
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