Sorry for not posting in the last three days work was busy and I had no time to write!
The past few days I’ve been busy working in the hospital. I
have been very fortunate to stay in the peds unit so far. I unfortunately can’t
work with the babies unless the nurse I am paired with is assigned maternity.
They have four babies in maternity and I cannot wait to love on them when I
work there next week! The kiddos we have had the past few days have mostly been
malaria with severe anemia but we did get a few snakebite patients. When the
hospital first opened they had a ton of snakebite victims but their mortality
rate was around 50% and they were using the same anti-venom as the other
hospital down south. After a few weeks of research by the pharmacist and the
director they found out the snakes who live in north Togo were more similar to
those found in India. They were able to get the anti-venom from a pharmacy in
India and now they very rarely have patients die unless they were not brought
to the hospital right away. I obviously don’t see ANY snakebite patients back
at home so these few patients I was sure to ask lots of questions. When the
patient is bit the venom can cause the clotting factors in the patients to be
increased thus decreasing the patient ability to clot. If a patient cannot clot
they can start bleeding internal and externally and then die from blood loss.
We draw labs and the guys who work in the lab start a timer as soon as the
blood is drawn and then watches the blood for the next 45 minutes waiting for
the specimen to clot. In a normal sample the blood would clot (I think but I’m just
going off what I learned today) in 10-15 minutes, but in these patients their
clotting time was over 45 minutes! We gave them two doses of anti-venom and
then will recheck in 6 and 24 hours.
On Friday I got to help out a first time mom give birth. I
have been told there is a stigma in this culture; if the women show any kind of
emotion in public it is definitely frowned upon. In Mango it is primarily
Muslim, which is a shame/honor culture, which means the people want to honor
their families and if they are shamed for something they have done wrong it
beings dishonor to their family. I would just want to remind you these moms DO
NOT receive epidurals or any kind of pain medicine unless they are going for a
C-section. The mom was extremely composed throughout labor and was breathing
through contractions like a champ! It took a little while for the mom to push
the baby out so the baby ended up with a big cone head but was still super
cute! It was awesome to be able to help this mom get her baby out and welcome a
healthy child into the world! Just so everyone knows I did not catch the baby I
was just there to help the baby take its first breath and make sure it did okay
once it was delivered.
I tried to take some pictures of the “station” which is the
central hub for the nurses but it’s hard when I’m trying not to take pictures
of the patients. We are told not to take pictures of the patients unless we ask
and they say its okay.
Sunday was my last day of work for my three-day stretch and
it was definitely the busiest I’ve been here! We started out the day with 2
peds patients and 1 in observation for post transfusion due to malaria. Soon as
the day progress we kept getting more and more and more peds patients. My most
favorite patient of the whole day was a 32 weeker born at another hospital. The
baby was 1.2kg, which is roughly 2lbs 6oz. So she was a tiny little thing but
mighty feisty. Her unfortunately had a twin sister that died at the other
hospital and so the parents took their other baby to use. One thing I’ve heard
about the local hospital is that it is trying to make its services sound more
appealing by offering services for less money. As I’ve said the Togolese people
are extremely poor and sometimes cannot pay for the services they provide at Hospital
of Hope. So back to my little peanut; she came in and we started an IV, which
was the only IV I’ve felt comfortable starting while I’ve been here! She needed
a little boost for oxygen so we started her a little flow of oxygen and then
started her on phototherapy (the blue light to help get rid of bilirubin). She
was definitely active and feisty, which is always good for the little babies.
The nurse I was paired with told me that if I didn’t mind taking care of her
she would do more with our other patients. After we admitted the 32-weeker we
got another child with severe anemia and malaria, a child who had diarrhea x
4days, and a little baby who had been severely burned. According to the nurses
they have had numerous children come in with burns to at least 50% of their
bodies in the past month. Luckily we had a surgeon right there when she came in
and he was able to assess what needed to be done and give the child the pain
relief she needed.
On another note, I have been getting progressively sick over
the past few days so any prayers would be appreciated. I do not think it is
malaria but just the flu and the PAs I am staying with told me they would give
me the malaria medication in a heartbeat. Once again thank you all for reading
my blog while I am here and I hope to post a couple more times for my trip
ends!
No comments:
Post a Comment