July 9th (Monday)

It’s the beginning of another week here, but it’s incredibly hard to believe that we have only 2 days before we leave Chit and Africa in general! It was like any other clinic day but also different from all the others as this was the first day that Dr. McAdam was back and you could tell that everyone knew (the patients) as I’ve never seen the queue for the clinic area so crowded! We began the day with rounds as always. After tea we started on clinic (this time Nicole and I stayed with the main group as Fiona went with Dr. Ros to the paediatric ward for ward rounds).

At the clinic (all 3 of us) felt a bit in the way but we were trying to assist as much as possible. I helped Dr. McAdam go through and look at the x-rays of certain ward patients and made sure that Dr. Rodney’s report was written on their tickets. Later I was in the Dental/Eye room when they brought the man from the men’s ward who needed to get scans done of his abdomen. The man came into the room with a lot of pain and kind-of lethargic, he couldn’t really get on the bed so Dr. McAdam asked what the blood sugar was after he had asked someone to do it during war rounds. It turns out no one had done it so he requested Queen to do it, so she gathered the supplies and came back to check his blood sugar. It was 2.2! So Queen went to go get an IV cannula for this man. JR came in and we told her the blood sugar, she asked if anyone had got the dextrose, and an IV cannula. We said no to the dextrose so JR ran to get some and came back with Queen to get an IV in him before he went hypoglycemic. We had to hold him down as he was fighting us with all his strength, he was slipping right out of his wheelchair and was nearly on the floor. But we were doing everything we could to get this dextrose in him to save his life! I was helping JR by holding his arm straight so she could insert the IV cannula to give him the dextrose. She tried twice to start the IV and got it on the second tr. JR injected the dextrose ASAP but he was fighting her and she lost the seal on the dextrose and some of it sprayed into my face/eye. I said, “was that saline?” JR responded, “it was some of the dextrose so your face will just be a bit sticky, sorry!” The things that happen during emergent situations, you just gotta laugh! We finally go other fluids running into him and he relaxed a little.

The next thing that we helped with was baby Grace and seeing the doctors explore with a mini laporotomy while we looked on. They decided that because the colostomy was now not active that she might have a bowel obstruction. They then decided to insert a urinary catheter. When they were doing that we were all wondering if baby Grace was really a baby girl or if she was a boy and as she was born prematurely perhaps some of her anatomy hadn’t developed like her first issue was an unperforated anus, thus the need for the colostomy. Once the catheter went into baby Grace’s bladder it started draining pinkish pus, they drained quite a bit and it became clearer. It was hard to imagine this little baby with that much foul drainage inside her. After Dr. Lipsi and Dr. McAdam finished with that they signed the ticket and headed to Dorothy’s for lunch. Fiona also went on ahead of us. JR was trying to put in a new IV cannula to get some fluids into the baby. She was having a lot of difficulty finding a good vein. Nicole and I were helping with suctioning after the NG tube was inserted as she was vomiting a bit. We finally got 2 good IV cannulas to use and we were half an hour late to lunch at Dorothy’s.

We hurried to get there and we when we arrived there was some tense conversations/interrogations happening between Dorothy and Dr. McAdam each at one end of the table with Dr. Lipsi, Janice, and Alison on one side, and Fiona and Dr. Ros on the other. We managed to eat our meal quickly and answered Dorothy on why we were late, twice… haha.

We then returned to hospital after a quick stop at our house. We helped with a few errands/jobs but we were mostly in the way. The queue was still as long as ever. I took baby Grace’s mother to the lab to check if her blood was a match so Grace could get 60ml of blood to improve her hemoglobin levels. While I was doing that Nicole and Fiona were waiting in maternity for the mother labouring there to deliver her baby.

Once I was finished getting blood for Grace I joined the other 2 to wait for the baby to be delivered. The mother was dilated to 9cm and was a multip. so the baby could practically come at any moment. So much so that Fiona didn’t want to take a picture outside the hospital as she was afraid as soon as we left that likely the baby would be delivered as we just had that sort of luck. So we stayed then suddenly there was the membranes emerging though still intact. It almost looked like a balloon that could be popped at any second. Brenda and the other lady there hid behind a plastic apron they held up and Fiona already to deliver put her sterile gloves on but she backed up to get some space between the membrane and herself. I stepped partially behind the curtain and Nicole was going to hide behind the others but then though better of it and stood next to me. Then Nicole and I were shocked as we saw the baby’s head now out but within the membrane. Nicole shouted “the head!” Haggai came in at that moment and spurred us into action by saying we needed something sharp like a clean needle to break the membranes around the baby. One of the nurses and Nicole and I quickly went hunting for a needle, so we were crashing around in the other part and then Haggai said “never mind”. We came around the other side of the curtain and I saw the baby slip right out and Fiona was right there while Haggai removed the membrane from around the baby. He then cut the cord and delivered the placenta while Fiona cleaned up the baby, weighed him, then wrapped him up like a burrito. The mother to my surprise was feeling recovered enough to get dressed and move to the other part of the maternity ward to lie down on her bed. The other mamas gathered around and sang a song for the successful brith and danced around moving their hips and clapping their hands in celebration.One woman cam so close to Fiona who had the baby in her arms that she was bumping Fiona with her hips, ahaha! The mamas laughed and clapped when they saw us (mostly me) attempting a celebratory happy dance. They probably thought, those white girls can’t dance!

Afterwards we decided that was a good conclusion to a long day and headed home. Along the way we noticed the sky was such a beautiful shade of pink as the sun was setting. I proposed we go down to the pontoon where Alison said you can get good pictures. So off we went and thankfully I already had my camera with me. We started out walking down the path to the river but then realized that the sun was really going down quickly so Fiona broke out into a run, I followed, then Nicole. We were running down at almost dangerous speeds nearly wiping out by slipping on the slippery straw that was on the path. Another thing that made it precarious was the fact that we were laughing so hard it made it difficult to control ourselves, let alone running down a hill with deep ruts prime for tripping us up. We took some pictures that we already knew wouldn’t come close to capturing the truly beautiful display God had made in the sky that day.

When we returned to the Annex we began to make our “staple” African meal – I cut up the beef to fry, Nicole made the potato wedge fries, and Fiona cut up the cabbage to fry. Most of our meals are very similar, they just have minor variations, but one important thing remains -CABBAGE! We didn’t eat until after 7pm and remarked to each other that Tiffany would be so proud of us eating at a later hour. By the way we have concluded that each one of us are good cooks and bakers and that sometime in the coming school year we will get together and recreate our meals and talk about this tip. Such good plans! Also Fiona thinks/bets that I will be the firs of the 3 of us to get married, I laughed, I highly doubt this… But of course I have written this down as a record for a future date when one of us gets marred first and we will find out who was right, ahaha!//

PS. Also Dorothy asked at lunch if one of the 3 of us girls wanted to go out and do some praziquantel and see her chronic patients. Fiona and I looked at Nicole and I and quickly volunteered. Which was fine for us as we weren’t wanting to spend our last day away from the hospital.