Clinic Day 2 - July 14

I just realized I think I have been writing June in my journal. Seems I am a month behind. Today I had a nice long phone call with my mother, which despite it going in and out of service on my end (I could hear my mother clearly the whole time, but she could not hear me at some points) went well. She informed me of my spelling error in a previous post where I have accidently wrote about the taxi drivers driving erotically, rather than erratically. I would apologize, but from what I hear, I have kept all my readers entertained. I will warn you right now though that there will be future spelling errors. I may overall by a good student, but spelling is not what got me to this point. Actually, I am surprised I have made it this far with the spelling capabilities I have. Thank goodness for spell check. I told my mom how to log into my account, so that she can fix that major spelling mistake. It wasn’t until after that I realized that probably was not the best idea because knowing my mom, she may go through each point, correcting other spelling and grammatical errors. That’s what English teachers do, right?

Today was day 2 in the clinic. After only two hours of sleep (the neighbors had music going all night and I was quite cold), I was not thrilled to be waking up, but I did. I snuck up to shower in the heated showers. I didn’t think I could handle another ice cold shower, especially after freezing the entire night. I then met with the McGill girls and Elizabeth Ross, before heading over to the clinic. I had planned on shadowing Denis, the male nurse, today, as today was his day there, but he actually had to leave to do some budget work, so I ended up working with Lucy instead. Although my first impression yesterday was that she is quiet and quite reserved, I was happily surprised to find that she is a wonderful teacher.

Our first patient of the day (while I was there) was a four-year-old girl. She was absolutely precious, wearing a pink and blue “plad” osh-kosh dress. She arrived a few minutes before her mother, so I colored with her outside on the front steps. Then when her mother arrived, we went into the consultation room. I asked Lucy to ask the mother if it was ok if I was there, but I guess she had already told the mother all about me. In the consultation room, the mother described her daughter’s symptoms in Ruturo, so unfortunately I was unable to understand. I started to worry that I wouldn’t get much out of the shadowing because I had no idea what was going on, but this is when Lucy surprised me. She repeated in English everything the mother had said and then she told me the treatment. She also showed me how they fill out the patient booklet. I continued to draw with the girl, while she waited for her medicine.

Once mother and daughter left, Lucy and I stepped back outside to join the McGill girls. We were soon joined by five children who spoke neither English nor Ruturo. They were speaking Swahili and were from Congo. We gave them crayons to color with, but when the little baby girl, who was probably about a year and half, started eating the crayons we politely collected the crayons and put them back in their box. Later one of the children (maybe about 5) returned and after a moment where he appeared deep in thought, he said in English, “Give us colors.” When we said they were gone, he walked away only to return a short minute later holding his little baby sister. He reached up to hand her to us. We could only guess that he was trying to trade his sister for the crayons.

Finally, another patient arrived, a fifty-six year old woman, suffering from severe headaches and dizziness. She was also fine with having me in the room. Once again, Lucy translated to me what the woman’s symptoms were and what she believed the diagnosis to be. She believed it was probably hypertension. Sure enough, the woman’s blood pressure was 160 over 90. Lucy even let me take the woman’s blood pressure after she was done. Later Lucy told me that high blood pressure is common in older people and had the woman been in her 70s, a blood pressure of 160 over 90 would have been normal.

At around 1, I left the clinic and headed to lunch. I spent the afternoon going through materials and working on my project. Tomorrow, my plan is to sleep in a bit since running on two hours of sleep doesn’t seem to be working very well and then work on stuff here in the morning. In the afternoon, I will head over to the clinic and observe Lucy with her patients. I presume that Thursday and Friday will also consist of half day clinic, half day preparations. Hopefully on Saturday, I will be able to go to the Kasiisi School in the morning to help work on the library they are building shelves for and then head into Fort Portal in the afternoon. Fort Portal is where I will have access to the internet. I am not sure when I will begin my health education in the schools because Elizabeth has yet to meet with Lydia, the headmistress of the Kasiisi School, and with Lucy. I guess once they meet and figure out what works I can figure out where to go from there.

I am exhausted after a long day, sans a nap. (I had originally planned to nap, but got caught up at the house where I eat lunch when the sky opened up and it began to absolutely pour.) Goodnight.