Today is the first cloudy day we have had in Africa. It’s actually kind of misting outside, but it feels good. There are a lot of little things that are different here than back home so I’m going to try and mention them throughout my blog. One little different is the outlets. Not only are they a different voltage, but you have to flip a switch to actually turn the outlet on. I forgot a bunch of times before I remembered this. The milk comes in little sealed bags which they don’t store in the fridge until they open it. It’s also whole milk, which I don’t particularly enjoy (I’m more of a skim person). The food all just tastes a little different than you’d expect, even if the brands are the same as they are back home. For example, the Mountain Dew here doesn’t taste at all normal. It tastes like a citrusy juice. Also, they don’t really use hand soap here at all. Not even in the hospital. In fact, no one ever washes their hands, or uses hand sanitizer, or even wears gloves with the patients except for us. It’s so different than the completely sterile technique used at most hospitals back home. Another thing that is much different than South Dakota is the amount of people that are always out, just on the sides of the streets walking or sitting or just hanging out. It’s thick, like it maybe would be along a major parade route in Sioux Falls. I’m not sure if these people can’t find work, or are on breaks from work, or if that is their work.
Anyways, we went to the hospital again right away this morning. There was a riot last night in one of the market places, so a bunch of streets were blocked off. That made for crazy traffic. The trip to the hospital which usually takes about 15 minutes took about an hour and a half. So we got there much later than we wanted to, but luckily we still made it in time to go on rounds with the doctors up in Pediatrics. This was way better than yesterday because we got to hear about every patient up there, interact with the kids and babies, and listen to how the diagnose and treat the patients. It was basically like intense job shadowing since we didn’t get to do any hands on, but it was still very informative. Most of the children in the ward suffer from malaria, meningitis, pneumonia, malnutrition, or some combination of those. Since they have very few diagnostic tools, many of the children are just treated for everything at once. Many of the children there also have HIV, which no one even really mentions because it is so common here. We will probably be spending some time in the HIV clinic tomorrow morning. (One really great thing about this hospital is that they give free HIV diagnosing, medication, and counseling.) One baby today was suffering from liver failure, probably because of some form of hepatitis. They may be able to treat her, but she probably won’t have a very long life. One baby was 6 weeks old and hadn’t gained any weight since he was born. He was the tiniest thing I have ever seen and was also sick with a lung infection. He couldn’t cry, could only cough. It was so sad to see these babies. Most of the children who are being treated for malnutrition were actually admitted to the hospital for other things and just have to be treated for malnutrition after their illness has cleared up. Another baby had lamella erthyrosis. This is a severe genetic skin condition. They said it was very rare, but treatable if the mother just gave the home treatments like she is supposed to. This mother hadn’t done that and the baby looked very.. deformed, for lack of a better word. I really hope that the mother continues the treatments right after this stay in the hospital. There were also a couple kids in there with complications from sickle cell anemia. One little girl had a stroke because of this. We also saw some kids with cerebral palsy, which was very sad because I know they won’t have the kind of lives here that they could have had in the US. It was so strange to see them treating these kids when a lot of times they don’t have a clear idea of what is wrong. There were several children that they told us really needed help that can only be given at the private hospital, but they couldn’t afford it so this hospital was just trying to help relieve the child of the symptoms of the disease. There was also a couple adorable little babies and toddlers that were very happy and smiley at us. They were the kids who were almost cured of their illness and would be going home soon.
After going along with rounds in pediatrics, we went down to the maternity ward. This place was a lot newer than the pediatric ward, and a lot nicer and cleaner. However, there was still very few monitors and no type of pain medication for the mothers giving birth. Most of the women end up getting C-sections. A couple of the girls with me have gotten to see these C-sections, and one even got to assist with one. I am hoping I will get to see one before I leave. We then went over to Minor theater (one of the best places for us to get actual experience, and therefore the most popular and busiest places) and we watched Mia change a dressing on a man. It was crazy because he actually had a nail still sticking out of this thumb that he will be getting surgically removed on Tuesday. He also had kind of a crazy looking hand wound that she re-dressed (which means she took off the only gauze, scrubbed the wound clean with iodine and gauze until it started bleeding again, added new gauze and wrapped it back up). That wrapped up our excitement for the day.
We went to eat at Café Mocha, which is also close to the market. There really isn’t much food around the compound for lunch, even though we were told there would be. Then we took a small nap because we planned on going back to the hospital from 9 to 1 in the morning for some more experience.
I'm sorry, but I just can't write about tonight yet. However, the best thing that happened was that my camera got stolen.