It’s Friday: Day 5! 8/10
It was a hot sticky morning here in Kenya. I left for the
hospital around 8 with only 5 other people! I think that’s the smallest group
we’ve had yet, but almost everyone went in last night so they were sleeping in.
Jenna and I went straight to casualty hoping that Omar would be in today, but
we didn’t see him. What we did see though was a woman lying on the floor on a
tarp just moaning in pain. I asked a nurse what was wrong with her and she said
she had fallen off of her bed last night. She sounded absolutely awful and
later we learned she had been raped and brought in last night, but was too combative
with the staff so she was just being left alone. I also noticed a familiar face
from last night; a woman diagnosed with psychiatric issues was still lying on a
gurney. Yesterday she had been yelling “Yesu!” which means Jesus in Swahili.
She seemed a lot more calm today, but was still waiting for care. I would have
stayed in casualty except there was a long line of people waiting outside of
the minor theatre waiting for wound dressings, catheter changes, sutures, etc.
There was no staff in Minor Theatre at 9 am so Mia, Alex,
Jenna, Ben, Ali, and I decided to just begin seeing the patients we knew how to
treat. We thought more nurses and doctors would show up as the day went on and
they did, but we still ran the show in there. They spent quite a bit of time inserting
a supra-pubic catheter into a man. He was completely coherent and wincing in
pain as they preformed a procedure probably meant for an actual operating room.
I asked if they had given him anything for the pain and they had, but it was just
locally injected Lidocaine. The procedure was almost unbearable to watch!
Meanwhile another patient had been brought in with a wound redressing need. He
had an open wound on his chest where the stitches did not heal his skin properly;
it had also become pretty infected. When Ali tried giving him Lidocaine to numb
the area for cleaning he just cried out in pain. All I could do was hold his
hand and tell him to let me know when he needed a break. It was patient after
patient the entire time. We told Bernard, our driver, to be back at 1pm but
there was no way we were leaving that line of people outside. Mia taught me how
to take out stitches so that was fun! It was her last day at the hospital since
she leaves Sunday. I’m really going to miss her! Even though I only got to
spend a week with her, she taught me a lot!
At around 12:30 Jenna, Mia, and I finally got away to get
some lunch. As soon as we got back in minor though, the chaos began again. I
saw Mia leading a man back to a room, he looked like he came straight from some
type of factory by the way he was dressed. He was also holding a reddish filthy
cloth over his right hand. When he plopped down on the green exam table he immediately
revealed the severed index finger he had carefully been concealing. It was
literally holding on by just a thin piece of flesh! Obviously, we couldn’t do
much for him with our skill level, but Mia and I gave him a sterile piece of
gauze and applied pressure using the middle finger as a splint. It then became
a waiting game until the doctor could evaluate him—he was most likely going to
lose that portion of his finger at the middle phalynx.
Each wound redressing was a little bit different—you never
know what’s behind that bandage until you remove it! I was really excited to
learn how to remove stitches and basically improve my patient care techniques. I
appreciate each and every opportunity and patient I get to see. Medicine here
is definitely different from home, but bedside manner and compassion are always
the same. Even though it’s frustrating and heart wrenching at times—I have
fallen in love with a culture that is vastly different from my own. It’s hard
to choose which patient needs help the most because they all do. Realistically,
I have to realize I can’t save everyone. I think the deaths I have witnessed
here have made me come to terms with that. I am really looking forward to this
weekend to relax and spend some time at the beach! A few people were talking
about a night shift Saturday night so I may end up back at the hospital, but a
little R&R seems like a great idea for now. Love and miss you all! I’ve
made it through my first week at Coast Province General Hospital!
------------------------------------WARNING! Graphic Images Below------------------------------------------
Unwrapping a dressing and a chunk of his finger came off
Some sort of growth
The man with the severed finger
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