I woke up at 6:45 AM after a night of restless sleep. I was filled with nervous thoughts of my first day at work. What could I expect? Amputations? Intense surgeries? Was medicine even right for me?
Having taken a nice cold shower the night before, I got out
of bed and slipped into my Medic to Africa tshirt and a nerdy pair of cargo
pants (no offense to anyone who genuinely wears cargo pants). I had a delicious
omelet (yes, we do have African cooks who make the most delicious and flavorful
foods. Marya, I don’t even have to add a grain of salt! It’s all properly
salted!). The mistake I made was having two cups of coffee.
We walked over to the hospital at 7:55 AM and met with 3
physician assistants (PAs) in a room before the doctor walked in. I was a
little thrown off by how pretentious these Portland, OR-based Pas were but I
then realized two things: 1) they were from Portland, OR and 2) this is the
medical world. Obviously, the medical profession is centered on helping others
for the betterment of humankind but the process of becoming a physician is
rather dog-eat-dog. Anyway, these couldn’t distract me from my first day at
work at the St. Joseph’s Mission Hospital.
CHEESY FIRST-DAY-AT-WORK PICTURE
its sideways but honestly, the upload time is preventing me from doing anything about it
The doctor walked in around 8:15 AM and gave us all a brief
on the patients who had died over the weekend. Having worked in the medical
environment previously, I was well aware of the element of detachment necessary
for medicine. Compassion is a principle characteristic of a doctor but it is
integral to understand that death is natural. From death comes life – which is
why it was befitting for me to spend my first day in the maternity ward.
In the maternity ward, I saw about 7 patients, one of which was
only 11 or 12 years old (having her first child). All of the women had
c-sections and the doctor detailed as to what conditions called for a c-section
cut down the center of the stomach or horizontally over the uterus. We even say
a woman, who had already delivered, have a midline c-section which was infected;
therefore it looked like she was still pregnant because of the excessive
inflammation. The doctor squeezed her stitched and bright yellow pus came out
of her stitching.
Following rounds in the maternity ward, we went to the
surgical ward and it was in this ward that something terrifying happened. We
were looking at the wounds of various patients – mostly gangrene patients but
also women who fell into fires (GB, yes… even more people falling into fires).
One of the patients had a skin disorder in which it looked like coral was
growing on his feet. What I didn’t notice was that the windows were all closed
in the patient room therefore there was no draft. The combination of the lack
of air flow and the dehydrating effects of the tea starting caused me to feel
light-headed. The room began spinning, my body temperature spiked, and the
exposure on my vision was turned up extremely high. The other Medics to Africa
students noticed that I started becoming pale and they quickly caught me as I
was beginning to faint. They took me to a bench nearby and gave me some water.
I had never experienced anything like that before and I am so thankful to have
had my coworkers nearby.
We came back to the house around lunchtime and I found
myself just drained from the day. Between patients, I learned that there were many
flaws in the African healthcare system. For example, I noticed that many women
had to endure spinal taps as their form of anesthesia for their c-sections.
Using general anesthesia would have required an oxygen tank that the hospital
could not afford. Furthermore, patients come to St. Joseph’s from other
hospitals. Sometimes, the doctors from other hospitals misinform St. Joseph’s
on the patient’s condition so the patients can be admitted (to “take the burden”
off themselves). Consequently, because of the misinformation, the doctors at
St. Joseph’s are not even aware on how to properly diagnose the patient. The
system is broken.
My apologies for the obscenely long post but my first day
was rather eventful. I’m excited and anxious to see what else is in store for
me.
It's awesome they are already having you working in the hospital on your second day there. I'm interested to see if you are leaning more toward still being part of the health care system or trying to fix the problems involved with it. Nonetheless you are saving lives, how cool.
ReplyDeletewell i definitely shouldn't have read that while eating.
ReplyDeletebtdubs you look supes cute as shelly the ultra-nerd.