Pediatrics with Dr. Isaac

6/16/14
Today got off to a slow start, as it was my first day in pediatrics and after getting to the hospital at 7:45am, our doctor, Dr. Isaac showed up a little before 10 (we had to do a bunch of waiting around, but we did follow the nurse for a while).  The joke in Tanzania is that everyone is on African time, meaning that they are always late.  Once someone is 45 or more minutes late, this is no longer African time and something is actually wrong, but anything less is African time.  We always use the excuse T.I.A. (this in Africa) for short.  In this case, Dr. Isaac was definitely not on African time, he was just really late.  Pediatrics was really interesting though, it was just like internal med but with babies and children, which makes things a bit more interesting.  We did rounds until 1pm and then left for the day.

Just before sunset, we hiked up to the rock that overlooks the city (the same one we climbed on the first Monday) and sat at the top and talked and took photos.  After dinner I went on night shift with 6 other people.  To save money, we all took one taxi, which should technically only fit 4 people... but we put 2 in the front and 5 in the back.  Dr. Lyapa was the on-call doctor in OB and we walked around and he lectured us on the different conditions of the women and what stage of pregnancy they were at.  I got to do one of the pelvic examinations and feel the baby's head through the cervix.  I could fit in 2 fingers and spread them apart a little, so by that point the women was 5cm.  We watched a really fast/easy natural birth around 9:30 and then Dr. Lyapa told us he would do 2 C-sections after he got back from dinner.  Naturally, we all wanted to watch so we stayed around for a while, but it turns out that TIA applies to night shifts as well and he came back at midnight as we were leaving (he had also told us one of the C-sections would be done by that time).  Around 11:30, the nurses started delivering a baby who was supposed to be born by C-section, but Dr. Lyapa wasn't around to do one.  The nurse had to cut the woman's vagina so the baby could fit through and it took nearly 15 minutes of pushing before they were finally about to get the baby out.  There were moments when it was pretty stressful, but in the end, the mother and the baby were fine.