Day 4

Thursday 8/9

Today I went to the hospital from 8:30am-1pm. It was a day full of just little exciting things, but I learned a lot. Jenna and I began our day by going to Minor Theatre except there were already quite a few students and not that much going on. She hadn't been to Maternity yet, so we decided to walk over there. As soon as we walked in we heard the first cry of a newborn baby so we were a little dissapointed we were too late! I began walking past all the rooms to see if any other women were in labor, sure enough there was one! We were just in time, she had just began crowning-- perfect timing! There were two intern doctors in the room assisting the extremely petite woman give birth to her first child. As hard as she was pushing the baby was just not moving. This provoked the interns to take the sissors and cut the perineum. Something about cuts anywhere near the vaginal area just make me so uncomfortable because I can only imagine how much that would hurt. It also makes it 10 times worse knowing these women aren't on any type of medication to ease the pain. Quickly enough a new baby girl was born. It helped make up for the death we had to deal with in casualty last night. The interns looked at us and repeated something at least 3 times before Jenna or I understood them. They wanted us to bring them oxytocin-- a natural hormone released in excess after childbirth. We started running around the ward trying to find it. It was the strangest little bottle of love potion. It was a tiny glass vile that the nurse had to break open on the sink. We extracted it with a syringe and the interns instructed Jenna to inject it into her thigh. All said and done it was a good first experience witnessing a natural birth.

Back down in casualty, Alison, Jenna, and I met Omar-- a medical student from Russia who was born in Somalia but comes back to Kenya every summer and works at Coast Province without pay.Oh and he speaks 5 languages. The action level was at a low, but that was ok it gave us a chance to talk to Omar he taught us so much! He invited us to observe him as he made patient rounds. His attitude and whole presentation stood above all the other staff I have seen at the hospital so far. He was patient, caring, knowledgeable, and relatable-- that hospital is very lucky to have him and could use more like him. An actual doctor came into casualty around 10:30 and immedialty came up to us and started asking us all these complicated questions as we watched Omar examine a patient. He was like "don't think, just say it! You know this stuff." Needless to say we looked at him completely clueless so Omar turned around and told him we were pre-med not med students. He ended up being a very nice doctor! I guess it's just the luck of the draw in there, but today we had two intelligent professionals to teach us! The first patient had hypertension-- her blood pressure according to the sketchy monitor was 189/89. I've never seen that high of a pressure on a person... until we saw the next patient. He had coagulation issues so his nose was bleeding profusely. Omar and the doctor suspected his hypertension to be acting up, sure enough his blood pressure was 220/110! Hypertension is a huge issue in Kenya and since the medication is so expensive a lot of people don't take it. It sounds like an issue commonly found in the US as well, except a good portion of the population here makes less than a dollar a day and health insurance is almost unheard of. The next patient was completely confused and was diagnosed with cerebral malaria. His spleen was enlarged so that was cool to feel. It was great being able to talk about the different ways medicine is practiced in our two very different cultures. I hope I get a chance to observe and assist Omar again before I leave!

Minor Theatre was slightly busy today. I learned how to change a supra-pubic cathetar, change a dressing African style (they clean everything with iodine here!), and got to run around the hospital hunting down Lidocaine. A patient with a severe steam burn on his right hand traveled 1,000 km to get his wound cleaned and bangaged-- and this is the fourth time he has made this trip since the accident happened! Chris was just about to debris the wound when we realiezed there was no more Lidocaine in the room. Joel asked the nurses and they said there was no more of the drug in the hospital. I called the bs flag because I noticed some sitting in the Maternity Ward a few hours earlier. Joel went to get some more from the chemist (pharmasist) but they said it would be an hour. Then he and I walked over to Maternity and bribed the Matron (charge nurse) into giving us a bottle. I was happy to see the patient get treated. It's so crazy he had to travel that far just to get some decent medical care.

It may not have been the adrenaline pumping, tragic chaos of the past few days, but I have learned to appreciate days like this. Taking the time to rejuvenate, but not letting the terrors of the night before scare me away from a place intended for healing-- even if it doesn't always seem that way.