a day in the life...

i haven't written in awhile as the computer is often down, and i am often busy. thought i would let you know what a day is like here.

every other day, some sort of insanity comes over me and i go out walking/jogging with len, leanne and jenny at 5:30am. leanne and jenny are marathon runners so they go runnning off into the dark, and len and i walk for 5 minutes, jog for 5 and manage to keep that up for 40 minutes in 70% humidity at 28 degrees, mostly in the dark risking ankle injuries with every step. on the other days i sleep into a whopping 6:00am.

we eat breakfast at 6:30 and are at the hospital by 7:30 for xray rounds when we look at the previous days xrays and the nurses in the group learn how to read xrays. we usually do some ward rounds until 9:00 and discuss some interesting cases.

on the days i am in the out patient clinic i see about half of the 50 patients (leanne or jenny see the other half), completing a history and doing the physical exam. dr. reedyk then comes in and either signs off, orders some meds, or if it is more complicated, do additional assessments and do some teaching with me about what is going on.

on the other days i have been spending on the wards with nursing students attempting to teach them, instill some nursing values into them. i have been trying to help with their "nursing process" which is like an admission form they are supposed to fill out on each patient with nursing diagnosis and goals.
i do see glimmers of hope with some of the students (mostly the men), but some of them should never have been let into nursing school. i question some of the head nurses as well - the other day a confused man pulled out his suprapubic catheter and they left him leaking urine in his bed for 5 hours. i had to insist they change the bed, i ran around the hospital trying fruitlessly to find a doctor, finally dragged dr. reedyk there and he just had me reinsert it and try to teach what an emergency means.
today i discovered a 13 year old girl with massive congestive heart failure did not get any of her morning medications (a million excuses later) and she was starting to gasp for breath. i shake my arms in the air!! i bang my head!!

but today i played uno with some of the HIV patients and the students and most impressively, the students actually interacted with the patients and actually sat on their beds! so i hope to spend a little more time doing that, getting some interactions going on. when i first walked onto the HIV ward today all the women were lying in bed listlessly and i started blowing up balloons (provided by lucille) and i noticed that the women slowly started sitting up and taking notice. things were more lively after i had blown up 20 ballons. they just love the attention.

we finish up by 5:30pm and end up going out for dinner at someone's house at 6:30/7pm for some pounded yam and soup. (hence the need to run in the mornings as i consume about 5 pounds of yam)

i am in bed by 9pm at the latest. the cow likes to moo loudly outside the guesthouse at 4am, so i am usually half awake pretty early in the morning.

that is the day in in the life...