Tuesday Day 7 of the Hospital

Day 7 of the hospital! 8/14


It feels like I never left the hospital last night! Today began once again in minor theatre. It seems to be the best place to get hands on experience so if it is busy, that's where you'll find me! The first patient of the morning came in with a very large, very infected abscess on his back. Upon doing a sensation test, it was determined he had minimal feeling in roughly a 4x4 inch area of his back. The abscess needed to be drained so I had the honor of injecting the Lidocaine into the region to make absolute sure he wouldn't feel anything. Trisha immediately volunteered to do the honors of draining the pus, which was fine with me! The procedure didn't take very long, with so much infection and hardened pus; we got out as much as possible and dressed the wound. Unfortunately, the patient had already left before found a doctor to prescribe him some antibiotics! Since we are the primary occupants of minor theatre it’s sometimes hard to find a doctor to come over and prescribe medications or assess patients we don’t have the ability to.


Today was full of abscesses and breasts for some reason. It seemed like every patient had a need pertaining to those two categories. I was about to assist someone in draining another abscess when Mya (the sweetest nurse I found here), came barging in and asked if I knew how to remove stitches. Thankfully, Mia taught me that Friday so I was able to take on the challenge. A med student came with me to assist so I was 100% comfortable with doing it on my own. The patient, a middle aged male, had undergone some type of hernia repair surgery in his abdomen and was ready for his stitches to be removed. He plopped down on the table and lifted his shirt and I saw the weirdest “stitches” of my life! I’m not sure if this was just an Africa procedure, or if people actually do this in the States. All I knew was I had never seen anything like it. He had an obvious incision about 8 inches in length on his abdomen and there were only 2 stitches! I really wish I had a picture to attest to this mystery. After prepping, I used a blade to cut the thread. I looked at the med student for assistance on this one and he walked over to take a better look. He then began pulling, forcefully, on one of them as it crept out from inside his healed incision. The patient winced at this and I still wonder how sterile it really was to have such a stitch, especially with the high infection rate of Africa! The tissue had already healed around the thread inside of his abdomen, so pulling it out had to hurt!


We have a reoccurring issue with a matron in minor named Rose. She never likes the way we perform sterile procedure, yet refuses to do it herself. I assure you we don’t compromise the patients risk for infection any more than the rest of the hospital—Rose just has a bad attitude. Today, she held up a poster of garbage bins and the matching bodily fluid that is supposed to be disposed in it. As she stood in the corner holding it, Joel looked up from a wound dressing and in his already hilarious British accent said, “What would you like me to do about that Rose?” She mumbled something about how he was using the wrong bin, and how unsterile that was so he commented back, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s the biggest issue this hospital has.” With her unfriendly demeanor and lack of smile she rolled her eyes and left. Mya thinks we are wonderful and help so much but Rose—she has some issues. I can’t blame her for being unhappy with the working conditions she is in everyday, but hostility isn’t the answer to these problems.


To end the shift we had an extremely helpful doctor come in and explain the procedure he was about to perform on a breast. The woman had a small benign lipoma in her breast that was simply going to be removed. As we felt for it the doctor kept repeating, “It’s like a rock within a pillow, do you feel it!? Do you feel it!?” We felt it and as funny and weird as the analogy was he was actually right! The rest of the day was spent reading and going to Café Mocha of course. Tomorrow is the orphanage; I’m excited to go see the kids again!

 The incision on the breast for removal of the lipoma.

And it's out!