Day 24

         

Today I learned a lot of Twi at the clinic. My friend Kwesi, the lab tech, taught me different phrases and the nurses taught me days of the week and how to count up to 49. I started out in the eye clinic, which wasn’t as exciting as I hoped until one special patient. Mr. Timothy was doing the exams and told me to come look at this man with glaucomas. They have left him with very limited vision. He was told to go to the dispensary to get his drops and medication. He was trying to get there on his own at first until I offered to help him. What a sweet loving man. His name is Owusu and is a 67-year-old cocoa farmer. He is a very shy and amiable man and just the way he smiled at everything I said melted my heart. In a society where disabilities are not favorable it pains me to see him have to go through life struggling. We talked for a while before I walked him to the edge of the clinic while we waited for a taxi. He kept trying to wave down motorbikes so I finally found some patients leaving that we’re going to help him to the station to go back to Bepoase. I got back to the clinic just in time to see a man carrying another man on his back going into the dressing room with leaves wrapped around his knee. I watched the nurses put cardboard under the knee and remove the leaves to reveal a pretty good laceration. The Physician Assistant Isaac and the chief came in to evaluate it. The nurses assembled the right tools and items that would be needed. Isaac cleaned out the cut then got the needle out ready to do stitches. I asked the nurse if he was going to get pain medication before and she just said ‘oh Ama’. I took that as a no and felt so bad for the man. Isaac gave him 2 internal stitches and 2 external before injecting Lidocaine to relieve the pain. About 3 stitches later he was good to go. As I was watching Isaac do stitches I thought how excited I was to be able to do that soon. I know that I made the right decision to switch to P.A. I don’t want to be just passing the gauze pads and cleaning up the excess blood, I want to be right there in the middle of all the action performing procedures and diagnosing. With each day that passes here I get more and more excited for what the future has in store for me. After a long day I came home and took a nap. Cassie’s friend Nimo wanted to show us the neighborhood at night so we went into town and had a really nice time. We went to Mama Vicky’s house where all the teachers meet at night to talk and drink a few beers. A few people were asking about the church and our University but the conversations were mainly about differences between Ghana and America. I was still pretty tired despite my nap so we left around 8:30 and came home to finish up some more coursework.

XOXO

Natalie