Ashley Shira’s Blog

Day Sixteen

When we left the hospital on Friday Kim and I were excited about spending the evening just reading our books and resting.  Kim finished the second book in the twilight series and I finished reading Three Cups of Tea.  It was the most amazing book…..and of course I cried…something that is not unusual for those of you that know me well. I highly recommend it to everyone!!! It also stormed on Friday night and we got about 30 minutes of rain.  We were glad because it cooled things off and settled the dust a bit.  We were also glad the power didn’t go out during the storm.  This morning we were awakened by Junior banging on our window and the front door at 6:30am.  He wanted to know if we wanted to go jogging on CoCo Beach.  I had no plans to leave my bed since I was up til 12:30 finishing my book, but Kim got dressed and went with him.  I couldn’t go back to sleep so I showered, wrote in my journal, and enjoyed some alone time to reflect on my time in Africa so far.  This has been such an amazing experience.  I can’t seem to put it into words for anyone which is so unlike me.:)  We met Dr. Akosua at the hospital at 9am.  Our first patient of the day was a very sick six year old little girl.  Back in December she contracted Typhoid fever and ended up with a bowel perforation which required a laparotomy for repair.  Her mom brought her in today because she was complaining of severe abdominal pain and she had a fever.  She did not look well and on physical exam she had a distended abdomen with generalized tenderness and rebound tenderness…perotinits.  She most likely had a re-perforation and she needed another laparotomy.  We referred her to Korle-Bu (the teaching hospital in Accra).  Her mother had to take her there in a taxi….something unheard of in America! We will be able to check on her on Tuesday because Dr. Akosua is taking us to Korle-Bu to show us where she trained! We had several good cases today, but I will have to write about them later.  We are at an internet cafe in the mall and our time is almost up.  I love everyone very much!