A Sad Day

Today the ward rounds were done by the head doctor, Dr. Mwea. He is exceptionally good at making sure everyone knows what is exactly happening inside the body of every patient. It is very interesting to see how the things that I have learned in school, so far, are related to real life situations. Normal the rounds take about 2 and a half hours, where as today they took 4 hours. It was both physically and mentally exhausting.

Remember the man that I spoke of who was in a coma yesterday? Well he finally passed away. It is sad to think about, but there really wasnt much hope for him. On top of this, the man who had his bowel removed, who happens to be the same man who had the hernia down to his ankels, was alive this morning, but died while I was there. He basically starved to death since there was no way for him to digest food. Its quite a sad story, but once again there wasnt much that could be done. Lastly, the old man who has a history of smoking unfiltered cigarettes for 40 years, was finally taken to the main hospital on the island to hopefully get a tracheostomy done so he can breathe. Every breath is a struggle for him at the moment since he has so much phlem in his throat, from a tumor we are assuming. The ony problem with getting this procedure done is that Mombasa currently doesnt have the equipment for it. The main hospital told us that if we want one done, we have to bring our own supplies. That is just unreal!

Tomorrow morning I will be witnessing my first surgery. We will be reversing a colostomy on a patient who had a perineal tear all the way from her vagina to her anus. I have never seen a surgery before, so I am quite excited. Also, I wont be behind a glass window in a room either, I will be front a center with scrubs on just like every other doctor. This would never be allowed in the states.

Dr. Mwea finally has postitioned another girl, who is also from the U.S., and I in the maternity ward for the remainder of this week and next week. Here I will be assisting on delivering babies and even getting involved with cesarean sections. This experience sounds is extremely hands on. I hope I dont take after my dad and get nauseous!

One final thing that I learned today, that I found interesting and is worth sharing, is that patients here can be difficult to deal with. This is because of all their weird cultural beliefs. One man doesnt want to go into surgery, to fix a wound on his leg from a stingray, just because his beliefs are that once you enter the surgical theater, you will never come out. He will regret this decision as soon as the maggots come and start eating away at the dead skin, leaving only viable tissue. Another intriguing aspect of work here, are the people who believe in witchcraft. You will constantly notice patients with specific wristbands on, which are supposedly meant to help cure them. Adjusting to these different beliefs can be hard, but one culture here actually can make things easier, and that is the islamic culture. Since these patients are so religious, when a relative dies, they immedieatley take them away to be burried. It may sound terrible, but this makes things easier on the doctors since they dont have to deal with the relatives pointing the finger and blaming their death. There are no lawsuits involved like there are in America.

Well the rest can only be explained as specific questions are asked. It is hard to cover every aspect of what goes on in the hospital daily. Feel free to comment with things you may be curious about. I will post again tomorrow hopefully to let everyone know how my surgery went. Wish me luck!