My favorite patient this week was a 9 year old girl named dorofina. I picked her file off the stack because I thought it would be be straightforward one that I could do. While I was talking to her, her hemoglobin lab results came back. ( for the non medical people a normal Hb is around 12-15, a value of 7 gets people.blood transfusion in the U.S. Here a value of 6 gets people a transfusion. ) Hers was 1.6. Most people here have low blood counts because of malaria but she had no fevers, negative malaria test. We gave her blood and looked in to her old file from December and found she also had low white blood cells and platlets signaling something serious. We are sending her to the one hematologist in the city on Monday. The 2-3 woman who are her family with her are so nice and smile so big when I visit them each day. She has sparkly purple plastic shoes and I learned how to tell her they are beautiful! Chocongola!
This weekend we climbed mount Nkhoma. We did not ‘walk’ it. We ‘hiked’ parts of it but we ‘climbed’ most of it. The path was an incline and through grassy like plants and many stones that were good for gripping shoes. I used my hands about half the time. Most of the time, our guide was a dog. Seriously, one of the staff has a dog who just sees white people heading up the path and joins… And shows us the way! We are going with a group of 3 Dutch nursing students and a family medicine resident from California. Our plan was to hike to a cottage halfway up the mountain, eat dinner and then in the morning hike the hardest part to the top and then return home! We were all totally out of breath on the hike to the hike – which was reportedly the easy part, but still up hill and rocky. Instead of repeating my my brain “o y gosh this is so hard” I played pretend Louis & Clark biologist expedition, admiring and noting the difference plants along the path like I was discovering new species for the first time. Apparently they do not have anything like poison ivy here which was good because we walked through lots of brush along the path.
On our way, we walked along the middle of this hill with no one else around. Then we encounter a see a herd of cows with guy herding them. So many random bright vibrant flowers – more beautiful the some gardens, makes me think of how God clothes the flowers of the field and will certainly take car of our needs. We’d Stop every so often to admire scenery (aka catch our breath.) Everywhere mountain, field valley, and we could see so far. Arrived to cottage ( owned by hospital). Local Man who met us there to give us the keys… His shirt was about 10% holes. Louise gave him one of hers before we left the next day. Inside The hut were plates, charcoal, pots. I got to gather firewood which was my kind of activity. We had brought Preloaded rice, which we combined with tomatoes onion garlic and tomato sauce over the fire. The way we all worked together in different roles to make the meal was such a neat feeling of community and accomplishment. The worst thing that happened on our whole adventure was I forgot the peppers to add to our dinner. However, I was proud I suggested pre cook rice over cooking it there, though others actually cooked it. Even shared some food with dog. Roasted some Marshmallows which were Pink and white for Valentine’s Day?
Bed…930 . Plan Was going to wake to see sunrise at 5:30. I woke up and my watch said 830! My lucky day! They woke up and there were clouds at sunrise so they just went back to bed and I got to sleep. The best thing about the hut was we Left most stuff there for the hike hike. So nice. We let they guy who lived in the hut nearby know that we were heading up and he just offered to lead the way. He was barefoot and wearing a fleece turtle neck ( while we were sweating profusely) and walked up the mountain like he was strolling on flat ground as we all used all limbs. I enjoyed pretending I was hiking the Appalation Trail ( I just read a book about this – Christina I understand how Katz felt that motivate to chuck his pack over the hill… Hahah) I also decided I will never actually hike it 🙂 as we walked I thought “This is one of the most epic things I’ve done.” In hind sight it seems like just a normal hike, but in the moment was epic. Each step like a puzzle to find. The best place to step. I was amazed how my brain did it.
The top was nice and we admired the view. On the way back we did not have the dogs to lead us and we got mildly lost and wandered through some corn fields. Navigating by landmarks. Then Jacob whips out his phone and pulls up goggle maps… I guess we can’t get too lists… Walked through a village and saw women carrying huge flour sacks or big bundles of firewood on their heads and a 6 year old following behind carrying the baby!
