IDS

6/11/14
I'm feeling bad about taking it easy today, but after such a busy day yesterday, it was definitely needed.  Like yesterday, we spent an hour in the morning in the male ward with Dr. Tatu (though instead of lecturing us, they needed her to do rounds, so we did rounds with her).  Then we went to the female ward and did rounds with Dr. Charles until 12pm.  The rounds are interesting for about half an hour to an hour, but after that, they get really repetitive and tiring, so after 4 hours we were very done.

We saw one 22 year old woman today who was expected to die within the next 2 days so her family was taking her home.  She had no muscle control and her head kept rolling back as they took her out in the wheelchair.  She looked as if she had a mental disability... it would have been interesting to have seen her before she became so sick.  The patient had IDS (HIV), anemia, cryptococcal meningitis, and liver failure along with symptoms including difficulty breathing, fever, and body rashes... not a good combination.  It was really hard to see her in the ward at so advanced a stage... Dr. Charles told us that they console the patients by telling them that whatever happens will be God's wish.

For the rest of the afternoon, I went back to the house, made lunch, napped, read, went to the global health lecture on accident and emergency medicine (which unfortunately was not well presented and I didn't learn anything new), had dinner, and went to bed.  Pretty mellow/not exciting day, but tomorrow will be packed and more than make up for it.