Charlotte Soulsby’s Blog

Bamenda, Barr Fish and Bami

16th August 2008

Again this week has been really varied and busy. Last Saturday was spent in surgery delivering a baby via C-section, then running to a party for HIV orphans. This was slightly unexpected as Bami (the Atlanta-living Nigerian born American) who arrived at the Rest House ‘invited’ Eric, Johanna and I to attend. ‘Invited’ was perhaps not the most appropriate word as she left after an hour to let us run the whole show. So 3 hours later and after several renditions of ‘old macdonald’ and rounds of musical chairs, musical bumps, musical statues etc we were all exhausted and Bami showed up to let the children go home. We were so knackered!

After half an hour of rest we we then out for our first invite to Betty and Laurie (2 nurses from the US/Canada) who fed us up on popcorn and introduced us to the wonders of the game wizzard, I’m sure Eric hasn’t had such an exciting night in a while!

The next day had to get up at 6am so that we could meet Pastor Clement to go to his church at 7am. I cannot wait to get back to the UK and have a lie in until at least 8am (oh and a bacon sandwich) Anyway this church service began at 7.30 and finished around 11.30. Talk about a long service! They even had a cattle auction in the church and marched the animals down the aisle so that the congregation could see the animals at their best before putting in their offers! So after that we headed to Gideon’s (a nursing auxillary in OPD) where he taught us to cook fufu and njama njama from scratch which included sifting the corn and plucking the njama njama weeds.

Johanna and I spent this week together on Women’s Ward which was really interesting as we were able to manage our own patients for a few days. One patient which really should be mentioned was a woman who was admitted with shortness of breath I believe, anyway, after an interesting ECG her potassium was returned and was sky high. We immediately decided to reduce this giving calcium gluconate, insulin and glucose (after checking this with the women’s ward doctor). A few hours later we dropped into the ward to find her very hypoglycaemic, clearly the insulin dose had been too great or the dextrose insufficient. We ordered a dextrose infusion (difficult to find) and found the last bag in the hospital. Anyway, after administering this 5 minutes later she was back to her usual self. Her potassium was returned the next day as normal which was a big relief.

On Tuesday, rachel (the public health student from the US) returned to Banso, which was really good for a few days. On Thursday we then left for Bamenda, Johanna was returning to the UK and Rachel to Bamenda (where she is based). More about Bamenda in the next entry…