First Day in the Hospital

Some random tidbits to start off here. I thought the sun would be really hot here and would like burn us instantly. I was way wrong. One girl was out all day in the sun at the beach, without any sunscreen, and didn’t get burned at all. Most of us didn’t even get tan lines through the sunscreen we did have on. So, it seems like it is actually a lot less intense here than back home. Our compound is really nice, and even though there is no air conditioning in the main part of the house, it is always really pleasant, not hot. Most of the bedrooms have air conditioning, and my room actually got too cold last night so we had to shut it off. We have our own bathroom in our cottage and there is one in the main house. There is the main house and 3 cottages. We have a private pool, but I think it is a lot less clean than most pools back home. We have to do laundry by hand and hang it on a line to dry. The water does smell funny though, and it’s hard to take a shower and be focusing on keeping your mouth and eyes from getting any water in them. They speak Swahili here, and I’ve started picking up a few words. Most patients at the hospital don’t speak English, so it’s useful to communicate to them. Most of the doctors do speak English, though.


The living area at our compound.



Our front yard. I love the plants here!

The view as you walk down to the beach.

That brings me to today. Today was our first day working at the hospital. Honestly, it was a little disappointing, I’m sad to say. First of all, we left the compound about 8:30 and it took 2 hours at the hospital to get processed so that we could go work in the wards. My group is Chelsea, Alexa, Angie and I. We were supposed to go to Minor Theater, which is where we get to actually give and take out stitches, redress wounds, and put in and take out catheters, but the group of boys got to it first, so we ended up going to the Pediatric Ward. Dr. Abdul is kind of in charge of us at the hospital and he took us all around to our wards. Once we got to the ward, we just kind of spent a lot of time introducing ourselves and being shuffled from doctor to doctor to interns. They should us around the different parts of the ward. There is an acute care section, an isolation section, and a neo-natal section. We spent most of our time in the acute care which was subdivided into 6 sections: 4 sections for treating acute diseases (mostly severe pneumonia, malaria, meningitis, and anemia) and 2 sections for treating malnutrition. Every baby that comes to the ward is first checked for malaria and HIV, so that doctors can treat accordingly. There was about 12 cribs per section, but some sections had just there tall flat tables with like boxes sectioned off for the babies. I was so amazed how they just let the kids lie there, most of them without even the sides of the crib fully up. The whole ward had a terrible smell and there are no monitors at all. There is one oxygen concentrator with like 12 tubes plugged into it administering oxygen. I’m not going to lie, I quickly figured out that I am not as tough as I thought I was. It made me sick. It is also so hot in the wards that you just sit there and sweat. The hospital is an open air hospital, so there is no air conditioning at all. Only the fancy rooms or offices have fans. They just rely on the breeze moving through to cool it, but there is not enough of a breeze to be effective. Most of the interns that we were supposed to be following didn’t really even explain what they were doing, so we were kind of lost the whole time. We just sort of wandered around the ward. One thing that we did get to see was an intern try and take blood. They just tie rubber gloves around the arms to use as tourniquets, because they have none. The intern just stuck the needle in to the baby, didn’t hit a vain, and just kept moving the needle around trying to get blood. The baby was screaming bloody murder. It took so long for him to even get a few drops of blood. I got really light headed, and I think I almost fainted. The combination of it just really got to me, and I have never got light headed like that in my life. I thought that I wasn’t a squeamish person, because I have seen some pretty gross stuff in the nursing home where I work. Apparently I was wrong. We left the acute wing, checked out the isolation wing (which really isn’t even isolation because no one wears masks and all the patients are still together in one large room), and left the ward. We went to find everyone and then took a tuk tuk to a place near the market (which is very close to our compound).

They don't really like us to take pictures with the patients in them, so here are some of those beds that the babies lay in.

The baby cribs for the older babies. The sides usually aren't up, even when they are in it.

Some wheelchairs. All that they have... its so sad.

A view outside of some of the wards.

It was really nice to eat out for lunch, because we actually got to order American food like cheeseburgers and fries or pizza. You guys have no idea how much you crave that when you just know that it isn’t easily accessible. The people here were really friendly, just like most of them around town have been. We asked for ketchup, which apparently they don’t keep on hand because the waiter actually ran down to the market and bought a couple bottles of ketchup for us, and didn’t even charge us for them. I got charged for a little packet of ketchup at the McDonald’s in Germany at the airport. It just shows how different things are here.
I should put in a disclaimer here that I realize that not all people here are nice. There are certain forms of public transportation that we have to avoid because they are notorious for robbing their riders. At the hospital, we also learned about patients who come in with “mob justice” which basically means they were beaten or knifed almost to death for committing some crime against someone. We also hear stories about women who have been attacked for no reason at all, so we are still being very careful here. We don’t really leave the compound at night, except if we are going to an “upscale” public place. We definitely don’t walk anywhere when we leave at night, because that is the most dangerous. It's also completely sad to me how little everyone has around here and how much trash there is just laying around the city. I very completely overwhelmed today when I saw some kids digging around in a dumpster looking for food. They literally have nothing.

On a different note, we just hung out for awhile then in the afternoon. I finally got to go to the market because I finally got money today. I bought the essentials: more hand sanitizer, granola bars, and a power adaptor. We then went back to the hospital after supper (which was actually really good tonight). I wrote the morning part of this blog in the afternoon down time, so I was really not feeling very good about this whole experience, but after spending the night at the hospital, I do feel a little more upbeat about it. I honestly didn’t want to go back again tonight, but I forced myself to and I’m glad I did. We went with Mia and Joel (a British medical student who has been here for two weeks and has a sense of humor about everything) so they could show us the ropes a little more. We tried to spend time in Minor Theater, but actually no patients came in who needed help, so we just hung out and talked. They did let us practice putting IVs into them, so that was cool. I feel like I could do that in a situation now where I needed to. They also talked to us about how we have to focus on the fact that without this cheap hospital in Mombasa, many of these patients wouldn’t receive medical care at all and how we are a big part of providing the best care that we can. That is a wonderful way of looking at things and I think it will really help me tomorrow. It was awful sad at the hospital tonight though because there were a lot of patients in Casualty (their type of emergency room) and many of them were not receiving the care that they needed in a timely manner. I don’t think that I will be spending a lot of time in there because I’m not sure I can handle the stress of that situation on top of everything else we are learning.

Putting my first IV into Joel. He was a good patient. :)

This was kind of a long post, but it was a long day with not much free time. I’m pretty tired after the emotional rollercoaster. Goodnight!