Elisabeth Hesse’s Blog

2-6-09: Wrapping it up

Today seemed to be the like the last season of a long-run TV show,
when they bring back the characters who have come before in a nice
way of wrapping everything up and closing all the loose story lines.

Ward rounds started fairly well.  We started in recovery ward, as
always.  Leprosy Man, or The Guy With Two Toes, is healing up
nicely.  He’ll probably be ready for amputation of his remaining toe
on Tuesday, but I probably won’t be there for it, as my flight leaves
early Tuesday afternoon.  The baby with the abscess has also resolved
and was discharged today.

And that’s when the people I have seen before came back.

There was a man at Kapuna who had been there with his family for so
long that he essentially became a patient advocate for all the other
patients.  Well, I saw him today, as he brought his daughter in for a
recheck.  She had been seen at Kapuna for an eye injury, but came to
Kikori (I believe the family actually lives here) to begin secondary
school (high school; starts in the 9th grade).  Her eye was still
bothering her, and after trying to look at the board and do her work
for a day, she couldn’t handle the pain, so she came in.  We got to
play ophthalmologists again, but there wasn’t much we could do
without a slit lamp.  We put in some flouresceine drops, which showed
either a corneal abrasion or an ulcer (the difference is how deep it
is, which you need a slit lamp for), so we just gave her some
chloramphenicol (antibiotic) eye ointment and some eye patches and
told her to come back on Monday.

Then we continued rounds.  There wasn’t much exciting going on.  The
tiny little baby in general ward–the three-month-old who weighs
about 2 kg–is still around and still tiny.  The mother wants to go
back to her village, but we dissuaded her from that for the time
being.  That was what caused the baby to be so malnurished in the
first place–she would go off to the work camps (the places where
they make sago or go fishing), and left the baby with her mother (the
baby’s grandmother) who fed the baby reconstituted milk powder out of
a bottle.  Not good.

After a lazy afternoon, I woke up on my veranda a bit disoriented (I
didn’t really know where I was at first) and with a few new mosquito
bites (I hadn’t planned on falling asleep, so I didn’t put any
repellant on) around five and remembered that I had wanted to go to
the store and the market.  Well, there was nothing I needed at the
market (I wanted greens and fruit, and nobody was selling either), so
I stopped by the store and got a few things I need for the next few
days, as well as ice cream.  While I was heading back, I ran into the
man who I talked to while waiting for our plane to leave from Port
Moresby almost six weeks ago.  As the plane had been quite a bit late
leaving, we had talked for awhile.  I had wondered if I would run
into him here, as Kikori isn’t that big of a place.  Well, we talked
for a bit about how my stay has been and the kinds of things I had
seen.  It was nice, to be able to talk to the same person as I was
starting my trip and now that I’m almost ready to end it.  It feels
like quite a bit has happened since then.  He asked if I was looking
forward to going back.  I told him I was looking forward to having
electricity whenever I wanted it.  He seemed to think that was pretty
funny (his wife and children live in Australia, so he does grasp the
concept of not needing gasoline-powered generators).

So now I have one more weekend in PNG to look forward to.  Hopefully
my Saturday this week will be better than last (when I was sick in my
house the entire day).  Sunday Manar and I are supposed to head out
to a nearby village with Robbie (a Bible translator from New
Zealand), so that should give me the opportunity to see one more new
thing before I head home.