July 6th (Friday)

Another Friday is upon us, and actually it our very last Friday here in Zambia! So surreal! We truly can’t believe that we are coming to the end of our time here, I know now that we are settled that I really do like it here. We started the day by doing ward rounds. We completed the ICU together and then went to the ER. I noticed that the man who was there yesterday that we did CPR on wasn’t there anymore. I asked Mary the clinical officer and she didn’t know whether he was now in the men’s ward or if he had passed, she said, ” I don’t want to know…” I asked Nicole and she said Alison told her the man had arrested and passed later on yesterday evening. I turned to Mary and said I knew where he was. She was saying, “don’t tell me”, just as I was saying “he’s not in the men’s ward…” It’s quite sad that someone you try so hard to save and use resources that are so limited here sometimes don’t make a difference, but of course that doesn’t make us stop trying to save as many as we can, we have faith and hope to make a difference for people here.

After that Nicole and I joined Dr. Ros to do the paediatric ward rounds. We finished peds just in time for tea but had to do a baby check in maternity. Dr. Ros asked Nicole if she had done one. She said yes, then I said “but not with you, Dr. Ros!” We laughed and Dr. Ros said “I have a thorough system.”

Meanwhile, Fiona was helping with x-rays after ward rounds were done but then the x-ray machine broke, not very cool as it was a busy day for x-rays. She also found out that the ECG machine in the ER can print out rhythm strips so her and Mary did that for a patient. After tea, we were completeing the baby checks in maternity, Nicole did the baby check and I was helping scribe according to what Dr. Ros instructed. After that Nicole and I reinforced some of the children’s plaster casts. JR was concerned that her new plaster for her clubfoot patent had already begun to crumble away at the joints. Dr. Ros also showed us a guideline for grading the severity of cerebral palsy in children.

We then went to Joey and Kate’s for lunch and were joined by Dr. Ros and Dr. Lipsi. After lunch we returned to the hospital to assist with clinic. We saw some pretty crazy things, like a very strange fungal infection on a young man’s foot. Fiona came with us but decided she would go back and do some laundry at the house. Shortly after we finishing writing out Dr. Rodney’s x-ray reports on some patients tickets we also left to go home.

We then made supper from our many leftovers. We just had a relaxing evening and did lots of reading -we all are really enjoying the opportunity to do so much reading. We do have access to the internet but we have done fairly well at reducing how much we use it and our devices and have spent our evenings more or less “unplugged”. Also we are co-hosting the Sunday evening gathering Dr. Ros (we are helping by bringing some food and water).//