Today was my last day in the maternity ward and I saw my first natural birth. . Once the mother started pushing you saw the babies head and then the shoulders and before I knew it the baby was completely out. This one unfortunately didn't have the result I wanted for my first experience. The mother was only 32 weeks along and when the baby was born, it was stillborn. It was pretty traumatic and sad for me to see for my first natural birth. Once the baby was removed the midwife removed the placenta by wrapping the umbilical cord around a pair of forceps and pulling it out gently. After all of that, me and the 2 other girls were hoping to see another one with a better outcome. We tried see another woman who was in labor, but some of the people in that ward aren't very helpful and nice to let you watch so we all decided to move to another area of the hospital. We first stopped in minor theater, which is where they do minor things like changing a catheter, sutures or changing a dressing. Not much was going on so we went to casuality, which is similar to the E.R. We ended up meeting this med student named Omar, who was from Russia and just comes here to work without pay. He was very informative and helpful. He explained what happened and what was going on with all the patients that were in there. There was one patient that had been drugged and robbed so they had him hooked to an IV to flush out the drugs. Another patient had 2 broken legs wrapped in casts after he was in an automobile accident. The last patient was a 3 year old girl who had TB and hadn't been taking her medicine, so her case became complicated. She was very frail and looked malnutritioned. After we talked to Omar for a while, other med students showed up and it became crowded so we decided to go back to minor theater.
When we got there a couple of the other students were working on a little 2 year old boys finger. The boy had previously had his finger tip amputated and the students were trying to remove his stitches, but the stitches had grown into his skin so in order for them to get the stitches out they had to cut some of the skin off. Once they had finished they dressed the wound and sent him on his way. The next patient that came in was a 25 year old male who had a wound on his ankle that had got infected. He was there to have a dbridement done, which is where the dead tissue is removed to get a fresh bleed so the body can heal itself. Joel did this procedure and started by giving him some Lidocane, which is what they use as a local anestetic. Once the area was numbed, Joel started by wiping the dead tissue away and then had to use a blade to cut the tissue around the wound. He had only about 2 cm left and the guy started being a baby about the whole situation and wanted more pain killers cause it just hurt way to bad. He was really putting on a show the whole time we were working with him. Finally after arguing with him Joel added more Lidocane and proceeded until he was done. I then cleaned the wound up and dressed it. Once he was out of the room he was trying to get Joel to write him a pain killer prescription, so we suspected that he might have just been putting on a show to get pain killers because he might have been addicted to them. Our last patient we had came in with a cut on his cheek that needed to be sutured. I found out that he had been there the day before, but the doctors had told the students that there werent any suture kits and to just dress the wound and have him on his way. But, the doctor had lied because the patient was from a tribe and he didnt want to treat him. So we waited around for a woman with a key to the suture kits to come so we could treat the man. 45 minutes went past and we still didnt see her and by that time it was time for us to leave so we talked to another man to make sure the patient would get care. The highlight of my day was that I got to skype Adam, my mom and dad and my grandma, which made me feel less homesick since I had to wait quite awhile until I got my internet completely working.
No comments:
Post a Comment