Indok’s Blog

Lumbar punctures and praise songs

Today was my first real day at work.  I’m doing an internal medicine rotation.  The hospital has 166 beds and five floors.  I work on the 5th floor.

The first sounds I hear when I walked into the hospital today was singing.  The main entrance which is on the ground floor is directly across the kitchen and the staff was finishing a praise song to God.  They were singing it in Zulu and I didn’t understand what was being sung, but just like in those traditional hymns the closing “Amen” chord was heard.  I smiled as I listened at the corner of a stairwell case so not to be seen although I was straining to watch them.  I walked up to the fifth floor where it looks like an adult nursery.  Rows of crib like beds where patients lie and flimsy curtains that are used for “privacy”.  Rarely anyone uses them.  There is one intern covering 25 patients = craziness!  Almost every patient has either HIV or TB.  (DAD- don’t worry, I’m being safe.)  The attendings treat it just like we would with CHF and COPD - it’s their bread and butter.   Words like Toxoplasmosis, Crypto meningitis, using abdominal ultrasounds to diagnose TB, LPs are used all the time with no flinch of panic.

I saw a lumbar puncture done with no anesthetics and I will soon be doing them as well.  My intern says I’ll be a master at them.  I hope so cuz that would be cool.  What I find interesting is that they ask their patients whether they can afford CT scans cuz you have to pay upfront before getting it.  If the patient can’t - well… you can’t get it.  Then you have to change your course of action.    Isn’t that interesting?  What would that look like in the US if hospitals integrated that policy??

Must go and grab lunch.  Hope you are all well.