Silvestri’s Blog

Hamarttan

Its crazy it is our last week!  I am not going to lie though, getting pretty tired.

We have stayed just long enough to experience the Hamarttan which is a wind that carries the dust from the Sahara desert along the northwest coast of Africa into the gulf of Guinnea.  So for the last three days it has been super dusty.  The first morning it came I got up and thought it was so “foggy” out… but really its a cloud of red dust.  We can’t even see the hills which aren’t that far.  Its neat to experience but I can’t believe how dirty everything gets.  If you leave a book out for a day it will be dusty like its been sitting there for a year.  Im glad I have nose hair.. its come in handy haha.

Anyways, so things have been somewhat sane around here.  I did call and it wasn’t too bad.  I rounded at night by myself which felt weird and good at the same time.  It was a Sunday when I was on call so during the day I had calls too. One was for a little boy who was very very sick.  The nurse brought the chart to my house and when I read “unconscious for two days” I got up to the hospital very fast and went right to the ward.  The little boy was aspirating his stomach contents so I hoisted him up and got his dad to help me pull his mattress up over this box so he could breathe better. I checked his meds and fluids and he was on all the right doses etc…  so I knew that was all we could do.  While I was there a nurse from maternity came to tell me she had a couple patients I needed to come see.  One was post-partum and had elevated blood pressure - so that was pretty simple but the second patient was in labour for 24 hours and fully dilated.  I got a little panicked because I hadn’t done OB since the beginning of third year and even then I admittedly wasn’t that keen on it.  Anyways, the midwives here are awesome and knew all the answers to her history.  This was her first baby and her pelvis was small and since they had already tried inducing her I headed off to get the surgeon.  Being on foot and trying to hurry in flipflops is funny but eventually we sectioned her and I got to open and do a lot so that was fun.  The baby was far down into the pelvis so it was hard to get him out but he was alive.  By the end of the section the first boy I went and saw had died… sadly I wasn’t surprised.  His family brought him in late but that was probably because they didn’t have  alot of money and were trying to wait it out or they lived so far it took them that long to get here.. who knows.  I know we did all we could.  They don’t intubate people here… which is sometimes a blessing in disguise I am sure… sometimes.

That night I slept near the front door so I would hear them but I kept thinking I heard them knocking so sleeping was sparse.  We had clinic the next day and the resident I was with left to help with a csection for part of the morning so I was there solo… thankfully I am very comfortable now with most things I see so I was good.  The crazy thing is that I saw over 100 patients in clinic on my own monday.  yeah.  I was kinda surprised… and then at night I just crashed.  Our friends showed us a couple episodes of the show Glee… I think Lindsay likes it.  Just watching that made me realize its been awhile since entertainment and I kinda miss it.  Maybe thats bad but just watching something and not thinking can feel really good at the end of the day.  Oh yah, one patient in clinic I wanted to mention was this guy whose card said “dizziness for 4 days”.. I thought it probably was like most other people who are dizzy but as usual I put my stethescope on his chest and felt his pulse (always my first test to see how sick they are) and his heartrate was above 140.  I freaked out.  He had a 5/6 murmur and a palpable thrill and a heave.  He had something bad so I took him to see the main doc and asked if we could get an ecg but in the end he had a good point that there is nothing we can do for him anyways inpatient wise so I put him on some drugs to slow his rate and told him to take the pills before walking home.  But the thing was he had that look in his eyes like he was scared…  and I felt horrible sending him home but maybe the drugs will work and he will come back tomorrow or friday and we can check on him.   I hope so… we will see.

Today was an easier day because there was no clinic.  I was pretty pumped that one of Dr Tias post op prostatectomies was good to go home today.  We pulled his suprapubic catheter and I have never seen a man so excited to urinate on his own before. I was happy for him.  He said he was going on a vacation and he hopes he can keep urinating this well.. ha I hope so too.  I did some procedures… tapped another knee.. I+D… got squirted with puss… typical procedure day.  I+Ds here are pretty rewarding with the amount of puss you can get out.  Anyways, Darryl and I went exploring later today and found a river that Dr D had told us about.  Its so beautiful to see… there is even green around it!  Its the dry season and so everything is pretty parched and it was refreshing to see water.  We will have to bring the camera next time… definitely something we will want to capture.  Its awesome when  you are walking and cows are just wandering around you and mooing.  People own animals but they just wander.  Today we met a guy with a big knife and mangoes and who knew a little english.. he told us he was going to “check on” his cows, I wonder how he knows which ones are his.

Well Darryl is waiting to go have dinner and I am hungry.  Hope this post makes sense… I feel tired so Im sorry if its just rambling.  Miss you guys.  Looking forward to seeing some of you soon!!!  Darryl is looking forward to jamming. Sabeo… or something like that