It's hard to think that I only have 4 more days in Iringa. My weekdays in the hospital and weekends exploring the city have become natural, and though people shout "mazungu" (white person) at us, I know the culture and I feel like I live here now. Some of the medical customs are really refreshing despite the limited materials and relatively unsanitary conditions. Most children in the hospital have developed a fear for anyone wearing a white coat, associating them with needles and IVs. When a doctor needs to check the child's chest sounds, he puts the stethoscope in his ear and shows the mother where to place it... it's such a smart idea that I've never seen in the states. A bit of a tangent from the rest of the day, but I've been slacking in my recent updates, so I thought I would go back and cover what I missed.
Today was the first day of my last week, and first day in surgery. I have literally been waiting for this placement the entire trip, so I'm excited to see what the rest of the week brings. I was with Dr. Ombati today, who I have met previously from observing many of his surgeries in previous weeks. We were able to see a lot of cool cases and a minor surgery in the ward, which is really unusual on dryas besides Tuesdays and Thursdays. One 5 year old girl had burned 30% of her body from her face to her neck, shoulders, arms, and abdomen. The top layer of skin was still attached in places, which looked like dampened tissue paper. Her eyelids were red and a yellow liquid/oozed from under them. The doctors needed to put in an IV to rehydrate the girl, however, they could not find a vein due to the burns, so that had to do a "cut down"... surgically finding a vein in her ankle and inserting the IV there. This took a while, and instead of moving her to the surgical theater, they did the operation in the ward because the girl was in too fragile a condition to be moved. Of course this is completely unsanitary except for the instruments the doctors used, but they had no other choice.
The rest of the time was spent just doing rounds and brief lectures by Dr. Ombati... he was also the one who performed the cut down, so that was really cool to see. For the rest of the day we played volleyball and I hiked up to the big rock with everyone for the last time.
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