So last night I was on call....we are 3 medical students here who are doing call. Since we've been here we're doing 1 in 3, so every third night you're on call. The schedule here has actually been pretty busy and demanding. Basically since I've been here...we work everyday and on weekends will usually have the afternoon off. After a month of doing this, it gets pretty tiring on you but its so rewarding that everyone coming out here to help and work usually work all the time. When you admit a patient, you will always follow them up and make sure they are getting the care they need to have a speedy recovery or sometimes try and figure out their diagnosis. The hospital has about 125 beds and most of them are always full...so there's lots of patients to follow....therefore we seem to always be at the hospital most of the time...but I can't complain...I love every second of this. It's amazing to see that a lot of people wait so long to come to the hospital that they are usually at advanced stages of their disease...sometimes we can help but most of the times we can't. The other interesting thing is that a lot of people will seek local treatment before coming to the hospital. You will see lots of patients on the wards with stripped scars all over their bodies...stomach, face, etc... Usually wherever the pain is, they will edge their skin and add some kind of local ointment. Some women will even put herbs in you know where in order to have an "illegal abortion"...that happens very often here. Just this morning, a mother came in labour at 4 months pregnant because she put in local herbs to get rid of her baby....this was very sad, she actually delivered and there was nothing we could have done to stop it. Other will even put herbs in their behind to help them with hemorrhoids...doesn't seem to work because one ended up having a prolapsed rectum instead or will aggravate the hemorrhoids even more! It's amazing to see what people will do here to try and cure themselves from while back at home...it may just be a simple visit to the doctors office. The only difference is that the patients who come here to be seen by drs are so grateful...they walk miles, travel for days, wait for hours to see us and we can't really communicate with them all that well....but they never seem to complain or get out of hand. The mornings are filled with hundreds of people just waiting in line to see us....they smile when they walk into the room, some will bow but they never complain. ANYWAYS....I don't realize this but I usually write the way I think and talk...so now I've gone off topic from what I originally wanted to share with you guys.
So yesterday I was on call...it was a really busy day in clinic! It amazes me to see all these different patients with different problems....you think you would be seeing people with malaria all the time, but lately its always been interesting cases. There was this one lady who came with fluid in her lungs...I got to remove this fluid using a needle into her lung space and sucking it out with a syringe (yes..under proper supervision)...usually back at home we have more elaborate ways of doing this, but we do with what we got here...that's the cool part and it all works pretty much the same! That evening, we did our night rounds and saw everyone we needed to see and around 11:30pm I returned back to the house to get some sleep. At around 1am....I got a phone call saying to go to the hospital for some kind of trauma that came in. Once I got to the hospital....I saw someone wheeling in a patient to the theatre...that's where we do all our procedures and where the operating room is. When I got there, I saw 2 patients already there. Supposedly a "lauri" - ghanaian term for mini bus got into an accident and 7 people were badly injured and brought to the hospital. We had 4 people in the hallway some in stretcher some in wheelchair...they were all dirty with dust, twigs in their hair...all of them had bruises on their face, eyes closed shut from being so swollen, one lady had a open wound to her leg with tissue hanging out, another had cuts to her face, another had injured ribs and was screaming and showing us her chest the whole time...she was in so much pain that she dropped out of her chair and spread herself on the floor screaming and coughing up blood on the floor and trying to grab my leg. I have to say...doing trauma in Ghana is nowhere near the same as in Montreal at the MGH. We don't have backboards, theres only one hospital cervical collar and no ct scan....so forget about c-spine precautions and just assess them with what you got...your hands! So we basically went to every patient and did a quick physical exam...palpated them everywhere to see where their pain was....out of the 7 we admitted 4 of them who needed to be observed and sent the other 3 home with pain medication. In the morning we saw that one had a fractured pelvis, the other leg trauma we removed the tissue hanging from her leg and bandaged her up and the other is still be watched for her rib pain. Luckily no one died from this accident...we don't know the details but it looked to be a pretty bad accident with they way all these women looked...who knows where they were going that late at night! All in all...this was an interesting experience!
By the way...I am feeling much better again! This time I took some Cipro to help me and this does wonders! Almost instantaneous relief...I am glad for the travel clinic in montreal :)
I got about another 5 days here at the hospital because on wednesday morning I will be leaving at 4am to get to the airport and then fly to Accra where I will be spending the night there and then heading back home the next day. It's amazing how fast time flies out here...I think always being so busy and having something to do makes it all go so fast. I am kinda sad to be leaving but happy to head home and see everyone and sad that I will only be home for 2 days and happy that I will be leaving for mistissini and sad that I will be gone for another month but happy to experience the rural setting in the middle of nowhere in Quebec! hahaha wow thats a roller coaster of ups and downs :)
Time for bed now...until next time :)
P.S. Evs...today i was listening to Bryan Adams - I'll always be right there :) xox
Gnight
So yesterday I was on call...it was a really busy day in clinic! It amazes me to see all these different patients with different problems....you think you would be seeing people with malaria all the time, but lately its always been interesting cases. There was this one lady who came with fluid in her lungs...I got to remove this fluid using a needle into her lung space and sucking it out with a syringe (yes..under proper supervision)...usually back at home we have more elaborate ways of doing this, but we do with what we got here...that's the cool part and it all works pretty much the same! That evening, we did our night rounds and saw everyone we needed to see and around 11:30pm I returned back to the house to get some sleep. At around 1am....I got a phone call saying to go to the hospital for some kind of trauma that came in. Once I got to the hospital....I saw someone wheeling in a patient to the theatre...that's where we do all our procedures and where the operating room is. When I got there, I saw 2 patients already there. Supposedly a "lauri" - ghanaian term for mini bus got into an accident and 7 people were badly injured and brought to the hospital. We had 4 people in the hallway some in stretcher some in wheelchair...they were all dirty with dust, twigs in their hair...all of them had bruises on their face, eyes closed shut from being so swollen, one lady had a open wound to her leg with tissue hanging out, another had cuts to her face, another had injured ribs and was screaming and showing us her chest the whole time...she was in so much pain that she dropped out of her chair and spread herself on the floor screaming and coughing up blood on the floor and trying to grab my leg. I have to say...doing trauma in Ghana is nowhere near the same as in Montreal at the MGH. We don't have backboards, theres only one hospital cervical collar and no ct scan....so forget about c-spine precautions and just assess them with what you got...your hands! So we basically went to every patient and did a quick physical exam...palpated them everywhere to see where their pain was....out of the 7 we admitted 4 of them who needed to be observed and sent the other 3 home with pain medication. In the morning we saw that one had a fractured pelvis, the other leg trauma we removed the tissue hanging from her leg and bandaged her up and the other is still be watched for her rib pain. Luckily no one died from this accident...we don't know the details but it looked to be a pretty bad accident with they way all these women looked...who knows where they were going that late at night! All in all...this was an interesting experience!
By the way...I am feeling much better again! This time I took some Cipro to help me and this does wonders! Almost instantaneous relief...I am glad for the travel clinic in montreal :)
I got about another 5 days here at the hospital because on wednesday morning I will be leaving at 4am to get to the airport and then fly to Accra where I will be spending the night there and then heading back home the next day. It's amazing how fast time flies out here...I think always being so busy and having something to do makes it all go so fast. I am kinda sad to be leaving but happy to head home and see everyone and sad that I will only be home for 2 days and happy that I will be leaving for mistissini and sad that I will be gone for another month but happy to experience the rural setting in the middle of nowhere in Quebec! hahaha wow thats a roller coaster of ups and downs :)
Time for bed now...until next time :)
P.S. Evs...today i was listening to Bryan Adams - I'll always be right there :) xox
Gnight
No comments:
Post a Comment