Arrival & first 2 days!

Hello all!

Less internet than expected but I’ve written a few stories to remember for myself and share. I’m not the greatest story teller and certainly include too many details at times but free to skim through anything that interests you! Miss and love you all. Your prayers have been powerful and effective.

Feb 9,2015. 8pm

After traveling from Friday morning to Monday night, we arrived safely in Malawi! The plane flight was fantastic – our international place seemed humongous and so roomy compared to the small plane we took from Columbus to New York. Also, they gave us little pillows, blankets, socks and face mask so we felt quite luxurious 🙂 it is the little things 🙂 I watched the movie ‘The Martian’ which really good – he is being resourceful surviving on Mars and I felt like I was being resourceful surviving on the plane. I kept my eyes closed for about 8h but never really feel asleep totally but felt pretty good anyway. We were met at the airport by Sam, a clinical officer from the hospital who we had been in contact with. He Was super nice and drove us to the grocery store and then to the hospital. Driving was much more American style than Dominican Republic. Sam told us the police here make you pay the fine right when they stop you, so people drive safe. We were met at the guest house by heather Colby – the lady who runs the guest house and later we found out she is also the principal of the nice school here. She is originally from South Africa. Overall, the guest house far exceeds my expectations, bathrooms area very nice, we have our own room for us 3 girls to share, kitchen even has a microwave. Heather’s tour occasionally had details like ‘the water is only on 5am to 10am and 5pm to 10pm’ after which she would add “welcome to Africa”. Things like that have not been that hard to live with though so far.
Right after we got settled we joined the other students plus heather for dinner. Felt like we actually arrived to Europe as all the other students staying at the guest house are from from Netherlands, northern isle of Ireland, Scotland, England. Everyone has accents and it is wonderful. Found out that we can join In these group dinners at the house for 600 kwatcha per night … A dollar is 700 so this is my kind of price! Had rice, chicken and a stew like sauce.

– they really do carry huge containers balanced on just their heads
– women really carry their kids tied on their back with a piece of fabric.
– they save everything. I love it. Toilet paper rolls get saved, not sure for what. All food is compost. “Rotten” food goes on the window sill for the house keeper to decide if it is really rotten of if a piece could be cut out and given to someone nearby who is hungry.
– one girl telling me travel distance in Europe “by boot it is 4 hours”. Me “by boot, do you mean walking?” “No boot, like the thing that floats in water”

Tuesday feb 8
We just finished our first day at Nkhoma hospital! I spent the day in the pediatrics ward. We started with a meeting with the ~10 pediatrics staff- nurses, clinical officers and one doctor. The doctor read from psalm 41 and encouraged the staff to keep working hard even as they have high numbers of patients these recent weeks due to lots of malaria. Then they sang 2 hymns not in English which was some of the most beautiful singing I’ve heard – they sang in harmony like a well practiced choIr even as we just sat in a circle casually singing. Then I joined one of the clinical officers (kind of like nurse practitioners) seeing the less sick pediatric patients. Unlike the U.S. Where we walk around and see the patients in separate rooms, here we sat in the courtyard and the mothers all lined up with their child and brought them to us. Most of the children had malaria and a few had malnutrition- it was very systematic – all with malaria got 3 doses of iv malaria meds, then switch to po meds and sent home. if they had anemia of hemoglobin below 6, they got transfused with blood and rechecked six days later. Then I joined the doctor to see some of the sicker kids. She is a missionary from the USA and seems to have been here a very long time. Saw a child who had recently woken up in a coma from cerebral malaria. From noon to 2 we stopped for lunch. When we went back out from lunch there was a new 5 year old child that just arrived and a Malawi medical student, a Dutch medical student Matye ( said ma-ta) and I assessed him. He has a swollen very warm left knee. We thought it was septic arthritis (infected joint) and called the surgeons to come see him. It was a neat experience because I felt like Matye and I really figured out what was wrong on our own – except for the translating. At the end of our day Matye and I joined the pediatric medical officer Sam caring for a 1 year old with malaria who was seizing. She had nystagmus ( eye twitch) left hand and left foot clenching. They started meds for malaria, gave Tylenol(called paracetamol here! ) and lorazepam to try to stop the seizures. They also wrote down that he should get phenytoin but then just left that instruction written in chart. It was then time for the medical officers to go home so they did. We learned that seizures should try to be stopped asap…. And she had already been seizing for 30 plus minutes. Matye and I got the nurse to give then med, then reviewed every reason we thought she could be continuing to seize. .. ( update a few days later.. She eventually sopped seizing and has gotten well enough to leave the icu area)

Feb 10,
– they write the day 10/2/2016 here so I have to try to adjust to it!
– in the hospital record they write 2/7 for 2days and 3/52 for three weeks! I like it.
– it was Matye’s (Dutch medical student) goddaughters’ birthday today and she speaks Spanish… So 3 Dutch, 4 american and 1 Irish student sang ‘cumplianos Feliz’ for her over the phone! Quite international
– nursing students from North Dakota taught us how to calculate the infusion rate of IVs by counting the drops per minute since they don’t have infusion pumps here
– main patient of the day was 4 yo with high fever, respiratory distress and impressive hepatomegally ( big liver). I have had patients in USA with hepatomegally but never really could tell it just kinda pretended I could feel it. His I could totally tell it was like 4 finger breaths his ribs. He was negative for malaria … Plus I learned that usually also has splenomegally. Right now checking liver function tests… But the machine to test them broke so we’ll see tomorrow.
– was today only my 2nd day in clinic? Wow I feel so much more comfortable and less overwhelmed than yesterday 🙂