Rwanda 2011, Day 10

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Blog day 10
Breakfast was busy today and buffet style. There were several French people at the restaurant and a few ?English people.I found out that there is a two week bicycle ride in Rwanda - this week and next or so Dr. Pascal thinks. They ride in each province of Rwanda, yesterday was Kigali, today is Gisenyi. I think this would be fun to do some day. This could combine 2 of my favorite pastimes: bike riding and traveling to Rwanda! This morning at clinic we saw 7 women for cervical cancer screening, bringing the total for the trip to 11. We screened 5 HIV positive women. Today we had our first positive screen (one of the HIV positive women) and she will be coming back for cryotherapy. Dr. Pascal thought it best to have her return since she was not prepared to get the treatment today. We had no patients after 1:00In the morning I had noticed that the instrument sterilization and wrapping wanted for organization. I took one of the blue towels, folded and sewed a few places and designed a "pack" for the VIA instruments to be sterilized in. This was well received. In the afternoon I made another since we had no patients and one of the Rwandese nurses sewed one as well. I also suggested either a color coding or some system so you could tell, without opening, which packs had the large or small speculums in them, and the unmarked would be the medium specs. Dr. Pascal really liked that idea. Now the question is how to get several more of these made and also find something to sew to the end to act as a tie. Caritas picked us up from the clinic around 3:00 and took Dr. Pascal and myself back to her house. We had a snack, (they seem to snack afterwork since they do not Sop work for lunch, and then have a late dinner) then talked for a while. Then Caritas and I walked Dr. Pascal to a house where he was going to visit and we walked back to Simon & Caritas's house. We ate dinner a little earlier tonight - 7:30. I was back to the hotel by 8:30, but Christina is spending the night with Dinah (Dyna) Simon's daughter. They spent the first part of the morning visiting orphans and goats around the clinic, then took a moto taxi (this seems to be a daily occurrence now) back to the house. They kept busy around the house until it was time to go to dance rehearsal at the church. They were back to the house by the time Caritas and myself returned from accompanying Dr. Pascal on his walk to visit a friend. Final word on IUDs is that the clinic needs to apply to be able to purchse them, cannot just get some from the health center or pharmacy. This is a process that will take 1 to 1-1/2 months. I should have planned on there being red tape, and been more proactive over the past few months to make sure this happened. Well, this does give me reason to return to Gisenyi at a future time 😊

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