Today I decided that I wanted a bit of change in pace, and since Dr. ABD was nowhere to be found, I decided to go down to the Under Fives Clinic. There weren’t many patients to be seen there, but it was only Musa and Sally (how isn’t much help) trying to check kids in, so I stepped in to help and Sally went to help the doctor. Without her there things actually went much faster, and we were able to get through kids pretty quickly. I was in charge of taking their temperature and weighing them. If their temperature was considered a fever, I also had to get them to swallow about a teaspoon amount of water with half a fever-reducing pill dissolved in it. Most of the kids where horribly scared of me, because I’m a scary white ghost. Because I weigh them before giving them the fever reducer if they need it, a lot of them are already kicking and screaming and scared that I’m putting them in this little fabric swing and attaching them to a scale so I can weigh them. Then trying to get them to drink a really gross concoction of water and fever reducer? Not a chance. By the end I was getting pretty good at it, until one of them threw up in my hand. Talk about preparing for parenthood. I was oddly okay with it though, because the child was clearly very sick. She was semi-conscious the entire time I was weighing her, which is very unusual, and only woke up long enough to throw up when I fed her the fever reducer. I was surprised that Musa hadn’t already recommended that she see the doctor immediately, but I took her to the doctor and told him that I thought she should be sent to the children’s ward fairly quickly.
After we’d checked in all the students, Musa kept asking me questions about life in the U.S. He was amazed by the number of high schools and colleges/universities in Michigan, and was even more surprised that there are lots of high schools and universities in all the states. He was also very surprised that Michigan is known for isn’t agriculture, and even more impressed that I knew how to drive. When I told him that we have lots of driving rules, he laughed and said it was the same here but people don’t follow them. When I told him that people pretty much follow them, because you can get massive ticket fines, and you can’t pay off the police, he was completely astonished. He kept saying, “So, you don’t bribe the police? Ever?” And didn’t seem to understand the honesty factor there. It’s sad that there’s so much corruption here.
After a while, I decided to go work on my research since it was a pretty chill day. They did to surgeries, but I wasn’t feeling like standing there watching the cleanings so I basically did my research all afternoon. I haven’t really analyzed the information in any way, but so far I can see just by going through the data that Hepatitis B is much more prevalent here than HIV for certain. My plan is to record the outcome of every HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C test for the year of 2010, then look up those patients and see what happened to them. I’m hoping that I can turn it into an Honors Day presentation, or at least present the information to some charities, starting with Footprints Missions to try and get the word about Hepatitis, and hopefully start getting vaccines and any possible treatment here.
In the late afternoon Callum showed me some pictures he took today, and they’re pretty impressive. Come to find out he’s really into photography and filmography. He showed me a video he made from clips he took on a surfing trip to Morocco. He also snowboards, so even though he’s ‘one of them’ we talked cool places to ski/board and cool trips. He reminds me a lot of Andy, tall, lanky, and into all the camping, granola crunching, backwoods extreme sports. He’s also into mountain biking and apparently got an offer to follow a whole bunch of professional rides around for a year and get paid big bucks to make one of those videos like Andy’s always watching for them, but didn’t think he could take a year off of school. Man, if I had that chance, I’d risk it!
Tonight at dinner I learned that mangos are going out of season, and I’m very sad. But pineapple is reaching its peak, so I’ll have tons of super fresh pineapple now, so I guess it’s all good. Now we’re waiting for Dr. Erdi to check on a patient before we start a little movie night. Hopefully the woman pregnant with triplets has them tonight! Mary, the midwife who’s really with it, has promised to call us so we can see! I’m so excited!!!
This post is dedicated to the small child that lost the battle with malaria today.
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