Day 32

I started my day at the clinic of with rounds with the nurses, Isaac, and the Chief. One girl in there is about 15 with a snake bite that made her right leg swell to almost double of her left. It looks better than the last time I saw it but still not a pretty sight. I followed one of the nurses, Auntie Rose, into the dressing room to do more observations.  The chief was in charge of most of the dressings today and even did a couple of the minor scrapes and cuts. He used hydrogen peroxide and his antibiotic powder on all of the patients and the silver nitrate on a select few. The next patient was a diabetic patient with gangrene that I’ve seen several times but only for dressings. Today she came in to get her second toe amputated. The chief told me to get comfortable because it’s going to be a long day. They prepped the room for her and injected about 15 ml of lidocaine into her foot. She had her big toe amputated a few days ago but now her other toes are getting gangrene also. The doctor said a prayer before the surgery which I thought was very neat. I am sure that a lot of doctors say prayers in their head before each surgery but here they get to say them out loud with the nurses. After he removed the toe quite aggressively I might add, he said a prayer of thanks and left. I kept thinking how cool this opportunity is where I get to watch stitches done on a daily basis and toe amputations only a few feet away.  I stuck around to help my friends Abiba and Auntie Rose clean up the dressing room because we were done for the day. Abiba told me she had to throw away the trash and I was curious to see what they do with their trash here so I went with. We walked to a pit behind the Ante-Natal clinic where Abiba just chucked the trash into the middle of the hole. I have seen the things that go into the trash so I didn’t even want to begin to think about what else was in there. The worst part for me was seeing the goats and chickens grazing around the pit. I couldn’t bring myself to get any closer to the pit because I wasn’t sure exactly what I would be able to see close up. I bought a couple donuts for the other nurses and I to share as we talked. I spent the next couple of hours in Isaac’s office and taking more notes. My walk home was the typical walk avoiding every drunk man in love me, talking to school kids, and running from the little kids with mangos all over their hands as they try to pinch my obruni skin. I made lunch, worked out, and spent the rest of the evening doing more of my coursework.