When asked at interviews about my most challenging experience, I will no longer struggle for an answer that doesn't include surviving my mothers cooking...Today was my first day at Chintechi Rural Hospital. Run by nurses and a medical officer, it is the largest clinic within an hours drive. While void of a doctor, the medical officer is trained to deal with anything that walks through, or is carried through, the doors. One can imagine the outcomes in a country with tragically limited resources, ridden with communicable disease, poisoness reptiles, and fast vehicles on narrow unmanned roads.
The hospital is made up of two female wards, a labor and delivery ward, one men's ward, a pediatric ward, and an operating theater for the occasional rotating surgeon. Each ward is lined with cots and non-absorbent mattresses on dirt floors. Medications are extremely limited, and glucometers, urinalysis, or xrays are not available. When supplies allow, the lab can check for malaria, HIV and hemoglobin levels. My duty will be to round with Rose, and Australian nurse volunteering for 6 months, and the medical officer, to assess the patients, write medication and lab orders and re-evalute discharge plans.
I feel desperately inadequate for this position, and to the best of my ability squelched back fear and anxiety as we started in the women’s ward. How do you tell a woman with a hip fracture, that because she can not afford surgery, she will never walk again? Progressing to the pediatric ward, my heart stopped. Grouped 3 to a bed, each mother patiently waited with her child. The children here are sicker than any I have seen in my life. Some halfheartedly attempt to breastfeed. The rest lay listless, to weak to cry, with eyes that reflect a short life of sorrow and starvation. The first child was a 2 yr old, inhabiting the body of and reflecting the physical milestones of a 6 month old. While she could sit, she could not walk or speak. Her skin struggled to stretch over her protruding ribs and swollen abdomen. With sores lining her mouth, this child was fighting a loosing battle with malnutrition and AIDS. She no longer ate and had stopped producing wet diapers. Her eyes were dull and her spirit was dying. Her body followed 24 hours later. And it continued like this, on and on. I was hit with waves of nausea, frequently stepping out because the gravity of the illness in these children rendered me useless. What do you do when the milk runs dry and the honey sours?
The hospital is made up of two female wards, a labor and delivery ward, one men's ward, a pediatric ward, and an operating theater for the occasional rotating surgeon. Each ward is lined with cots and non-absorbent mattresses on dirt floors. Medications are extremely limited, and glucometers, urinalysis, or xrays are not available. When supplies allow, the lab can check for malaria, HIV and hemoglobin levels. My duty will be to round with Rose, and Australian nurse volunteering for 6 months, and the medical officer, to assess the patients, write medication and lab orders and re-evalute discharge plans.
I feel desperately inadequate for this position, and to the best of my ability squelched back fear and anxiety as we started in the women’s ward. How do you tell a woman with a hip fracture, that because she can not afford surgery, she will never walk again? Progressing to the pediatric ward, my heart stopped. Grouped 3 to a bed, each mother patiently waited with her child. The children here are sicker than any I have seen in my life. Some halfheartedly attempt to breastfeed. The rest lay listless, to weak to cry, with eyes that reflect a short life of sorrow and starvation. The first child was a 2 yr old, inhabiting the body of and reflecting the physical milestones of a 6 month old. While she could sit, she could not walk or speak. Her skin struggled to stretch over her protruding ribs and swollen abdomen. With sores lining her mouth, this child was fighting a loosing battle with malnutrition and AIDS. She no longer ate and had stopped producing wet diapers. Her eyes were dull and her spirit was dying. Her body followed 24 hours later. And it continued like this, on and on. I was hit with waves of nausea, frequently stepping out because the gravity of the illness in these children rendered me useless. What do you do when the milk runs dry and the honey sours?
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