“A house without visitors is a dead house.” –Fyson Kasenga, director of community health
Our “house” of Malamulo is definitely alive and well! On Thursday I met Dr. John Osbourne at the airport. He is an ED physician from Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside, CA and after touring around Kenya and Tanzania he is volunteering here for two weeks. Yesterday I met a group of seven from Loma Linda at the airport. There is a pediatrician and her 5 yo daughter, an ER resident, 3 ER nurses, and a 17 yo boy. They are all here for two weeks. One of the nurses is working on writing some grants to acquire funding for projects here as well.
It is nice to have company and as those of you who know me, you know that I LOVE having company. I do have to admit that I feel like I’ve been working non-stop for the past three weeks and am close to exhausted. I still have a persistent cough that isn’t getting much better so in light of all of that I’m planning to take the afternoon “off” (I’m not sure if that will work or not).
As I’ve taken the visitors around the hospital I have continued to learn more and more about the clinical side of the hospital… I’ll share one brief story about a patient.
On Friday while taking Dr. Osbourne around we came to the maternity ward and the nurse told us there was a mother there who was epileptic and had given birth in the village. During labor, or right after, she started seizing so the family had brought her to the hospital. By the time we saw her she had been seizing for probably 24 hours without stopping and was unconscious. Her blood pressure was normal and they weren’t sure what else to do. Mr. Monjeza, the clinical officer with us, suggested they check her blood sugar to see if it was too low. So Dr. Osbourne left instructions to take the blood sample then immediately give a dose of dextrose. About an hour later when we got to the lab they reported her sugar was low – 65. We soon met the nurse who was caring for her and he told us she had stopped seizing with the dextrose! Today when taking the second group around we saw her again. She has had a couple of seizures since, but is awake and talking now. This case is definitely good news – so far. Her baby is very tiny but very sweet and seems to be eating.
It is nice to have visitors if only to see Malamulo again with fresh eyes and to live vicariously through their experiences. Coming here, though, volunteers need to be relatively enthusiastic and willing to jump in and get busy. It seems like what works is to show people what there is to do and then let them choose what needs to be done and what they want to do first. We’ll see if my theory works…
No comments:
Post a Comment