Island life

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The last two days at the hospital have been much of the same. There are 5 patients on the ward, and they have all been here longer than I have. So ward rounds are very quick. Today one of the doctors did a presentation on diabetes. It was really odd because other than the consultants, I knew more about diabetes than every doctor there, including the one presenting. It's just not common over here at all. The only reason they were doing the presentation is because a young girl was diagnosed with diabetes on the ward two weeks ago, and none of the doctors or nurses knew much about the treatment or complications. It made me feel smart, and better about knowing nothing about sickle cell anaemia the days before.

It was also odd because their management and guidance is different to ours due to their lack of resources. In the UK we would continuously monitor blood tests and do blood gases which instantly tell you the patient's electrolytes and how their lungs are working. In St Lucia, a blood gas can take 2 hours to come back from the lab (making it pointless) and on weekends, no blood tests can be done. This means they have to use a lot of clinical judgement and other tests like ECGs to try and monitor electrolytes, which isn't easy. They also said that potassium solutions are hard to come by, so if the patient is conscious and has low potassium, you should just feed them bananas and coconut water. That's actually in their hospital guidance! It seems a lot of their treatments are often to eat local fruit.



Update on the baby with the kidney problem. They found one dose of albumin on the island, so she had that this morning. Now she has to wait for more to be imported, but there is still no word on how long that will take.

The hospital also has a lot of chickens wandering about the car park and waiting room. So the cleaners have to clean chicken poop from the maternity and A&E waiting rooms most days. It's quite funny really.



I went into town yesterday, and had a quick look around the market. It was pretty cool because there are so many fruits and vegetables that I have never seen in my life. There wasn't actually much I recognised. There are also drive through ATMs which are just for lazy people, because it's just a normal ATM on the wall of a bank, but people can drive up to it to use it instead of parking and getting out. It's a bit odd, because pedestrians still use them to, and you'd have to really lean out of your car window to reach.

I haven't done much else because I've been relaxing and avoiding the heat. And the family are currently doing a lot of DIY like building windows and kitchen units.



The radio here is also very weird. The local station plays a lot of reggae obviously, but three times a day, the music will suddenly stop and a woman will read out the obituaries. She goes through everyone that has died recently, what family members they've left behind (and some have left a lot of children and grandchildren who are all named) and then they tell you where the body is or where the funeral will be. This goes on for about 25 minutes. Even if they've lived in the UK for 30 years, if they came from St Lucia, they get their obituary read out. It's so morbid, but once they're done they just go back to playing reggae and dance music again. It's odd, and it's always playing whilst I'm eating breakfast.



I also found out that Uncle has a pet Terrapin called Humphrey. So now I like to visit him and feed him.

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Photos

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Humphrey

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Hospital chickens

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Family fitting windows

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Me on the balcony, because you haven't seen my face yet