Third Day in the Hospital

I woke up today very tired. Last night was a long night but it was time to head to the hospital again.  One of the doctors in pediatrics set us up to go observe the HIV children’s clinic this morning.  I got to the hospital and we found the clinic. This area of the hospital actually looked comparable to an actual clinic.  They had soap unlike many areas of the hospital.  The doctor we were with this morning was amazing.  She explained how HIV is transferred to children and how their aim is to prevent mothers from passing the infection on to their children.  She had consults with many children, taking blood, checking how their medication had been working, or meeting with newborn mothers who are waiting for their results on the state of their child. 

The doctor sat with us for a very long time explaining that HIV is very tough to work with.  Because of African culture many women can’t afford the proper preventions for their children.  One of the coolest things I saw today was a woman who had just had her baby; it was 9 months old, and returned to the clinic to view the results of her child’s blood test.  The doctor happily told the mother that her child was HIV negative and the happiness the mother had was unexplainable.  We saw quite a few patients this morning but it was eleven and we wanted to check out some other things going on.  We made our way to minor theatre.

Minor theatre wasn’t too busy but we got to observe some really cool things today.  The first thing I observed was a man who had a small cut and it soon turned into infection. (picture below)  We needed to cut the dead skin out and then redress the wound.  The man was a big baby and couldn’t stand the pain.  We gave him some numbing and they worked on him slowly.  As this was happening one of the girls here and I did our first redressing.  The man had cut his fingers at work and had to have his stitches cleaned.  We wanted a doctor to check to make sure it looked okay before we redressed it so we called one of the medical interns over.  He told us that the fingernail was too infected and that it was dead.  He told us to remove the fingernail.  We did not feel comfortable doing that so we refused but he wouldn’t do it himself.  The man said he would come back the next day to get that done so we redressed the wound and sent him on his way. 

                                               the man's ankle

We saw a couple other small things, but soon it was time to leave for lunch.  We made our way to a local café and when I got home I was exhausted and took a nap.  I’m not going back to the hospital tonight; instead we are just taking it easy at the house.  All for now.