Carina’s Blog

1st week

This week has flown by and was busy.  I am exhausted every night which is not only from work but also from the humid heat.  I feel like I have not stop sweating since I have step out into Uganda.  So far, I have pretty passed out on my bed every night sometime between 9-10pm and then up at 5:30-6am from the crazy birds and the mosque.  Hopefully I’ll be more adjusted and be able to get some more sleep soon.

As for Ugandan food, I have only had rice, beans and Irish potato.  The Irish potato here is what we called mashed potato.  It’s actually pretty good.  But otherwise, I have had sandwiches from cafes because the docs at the clinic don’t the Ugandan food served for the staff.

Started to see my own patients in one of the consult rooms and recommend labs and try to come up with diagnoses.  It’s very much like home in that we do the same.  But the diagnoses I have seen so far are all pretty much tropical medicine.  Things like malaria, acute gastro, pneumonia, infected wounds, etc.  There are also medicals which we called physicals back home, for refugees going to Australia, Canada and also for Peace Corps.    Otherwise the patient population is mostly ex-pats or well off Ugandans.

Also noticed that there are few things that are always disposable.  Back home, pretty much everything we use are disposable.  Not here.  They try to re-use everything they can and only dispose of the equipment that are in contact with human fluids. Most of the time diagnoses are very much depended on hands, stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, thermometer and some form of torch.  Dr visits, labs and meds are also very inexpensiv, unlike home.  It’s really amazing to see what gets done with so much less than what I have been trained with so far.