Wednesday 22 August 2012

Lazy!-August 21st, 2012

Today we returned to the hospital. I didn't make it there until about 9:30am, but I instantly went up to major theater to see what the procedures were today. The first one I was was a little baby who had hydrospadius, which is where the urethra hole on the penis is in the wrong spot. The hole was on the underside and was farther down than normal. The surgeons opened up the head and and to move the urethra into place and stitch the tissue around it back so that it would heal normally. They also did a circumcision, which I am not sure if is normal in Africa or not. When they finished they sutured the incisions back up and dressed the wound. They had to leave a small tube in the urethra to allow urine out without disturbing the wound. After finishing with this surgery not much was going on and it was already 11 am. We decided to make our way to minor theater.

Once we arrived in minor they didn't have much going on either, but I was able to clean a huge wound that a man had got from a road accident. His hand was severely swollen, so I cleaned it and had Omar take a look. He said that we needed to test the feeling in his hand so we took a needle and poked in different places on the hand. He was luckily able to feel everything, but he couldn't move his hand. We had to redress the wound and send him off to a doctor to get his hand looked at since he had loss muscle control. Shortly after he left, another man came in and needed a stitch removed. I got to remove his stitch, which wasn't hard. The wound was all healed up and he only had one stitch left so I cut it out and he didn't even need to be bandaged up. We saw another patient who had two huge wounds on his foot. He had gotten a cut from a iron sheet and it had gotten infected. It was a terrible wound and one of the other students had to clean it and debride it to get rid of all the dead tissue. Right before we left the hospital, there was a woman that had fainted and we had to go help her get to casuality. One of the ladies that was with her informed us that she has been having episodes where she faints, fights and then comes out of it about ten minutes later. She needed to get a CT to see if anything in the brain was causing it, but we had to get her checked out first from fainting. On our way to find a wheelchair for her I came across a gurny that had a body on it covered by a sheet. I knew instantly that the person was dead. It was distrubing, but I had to move on becasue here that was normal.

At about 1230pm we left the hospital and came back to the compound for lunch. We have been relaxing, reading and swimming. Another group decided to go to the beach, but I honestly was too lazy to walk there so I opted to stay here and update my blog. Later in the night we went to the city mall, which was very nice. When we were inside it didn't even feel like we were in Africa. We then ate some dinner and dessert at Cafesserie and went shopping at the Nakumatt.

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