Conclusion of Week 1!

Hi everyone! It has been a good week or so since I have updated, and I have fallen a solid 3 weeks behind! In order for me to catch everyone up, I am going to give the speed version of the events of the last three weeks, and if anyone cares for more details, I have pictures of EVERYTHING and a small written journal I have been keeping in order to jog my memory. I also will unlikely have time to write more than maybe one post before I leave for Cape Town on the 31^st, so let’s get down to it!

END WEEK 1:

I left off with brief explanations of the earlier part of my week at St Mary’s. Over the course of the first week, I travelled between the various areas of St. Marys. I spent Monday in OB/GYN, where I saw vaginal suturing post-delivery. The delivery system is crazy at St. Marys, women are in and out in 4 hours! They literally make the women sit in the chairs until they are 3 inches dilated, then take them to the back to start the delivery. Monday was probably my least favorite day, OB at St. Marys was definitely not a boys area. On Tuesday, Leanna and I spent the day in Ithemba, the HIV/AIDS clinic. We walked into Ithemba and there were lines of chairs in every room and along the hallway, all filled with people who were HIV positive. Ithemba is a clinic where people that qualify for HAART (Highly active anti-retroviral therapy) can get it free of charge. Unfortunately, in order to qualify for HAARTs the person has to have a CD4 cell count of under 200. A CD4 count of 200 is defined by the World Health Organization as the level at which a person is susceptible to opportunistic infections, most everyone calls this point AIDS. The ventilation in Ithemba was also bad, requiring us to wear masks as we helped the nurses take vitals and screen patients to the drug regiment areas. I spent Wednesday in MOPD (medical outpatient department) with an extremely sharp older lady called Sister Pilay. Basically it consisted of me sitting in on consultations while she either treated and prescribed medications for patients or sent them to one of the two doctors working. She also included me in the differentials, asking me if I recognized different symptoms and how to spot them. She also showed me what to look for in determining cases of pediatric HIV and showed me how to palpate the different lymph nodes. Finally, I got some excellent experience listening to lung sounds and actually got to hear crepitation! The only day that might have been better than Wednesday was Thursday, where Marjon and I travelled out to a REMOTE area called the Kinswani in the valleys past Durban. Getting there was like a thrill ride, our driver literally hurtled down these dirt roads along a mountain side and the whole time I was gripping the seat in front of me with one hand and holding my camera with the other. After getting to the valley and literally driving through a couple fields, we arrived. The people of the Kinswani live in mud yurt-like structures with sheet metal roofs called huts, where there is no running water, nor electricity. The people live purely off the land, getting money for the sale of food they grow on their land. I got some incredible photos and look forward to finding a way to upload them for all of you guys. I spent Friday in the Pediatric department and saw lots of burn, TB-related respiratory/meningitis, malnutrition, and broken bones cases. The pictures explain these a lot better than I can, so stay tuned.

STILL SORTING OUT PICTURE ALBUMS!