St. Mary's in Kiserian

---

Here's to hoping this post actually survives the sketchy internet here in Africa and makes it through the airwaves. I say this because on Saturday I spent about 45 minutes giving a relatively detailed update of the week (per Erin's request), while making my roommates patiently wait so I could finish. Naturally, as soon as I hit the 'publish' button, I got that pleasant white screen that says "Error!" (With an exclamation mark, like it's laughing at me!) and it was all gone! Bummer. . . That said, I am going to make this an even more brief update in case something of that sort should happen again.

We've been at the clinic for over a week now. I was actually surprised that they do have a method they use to keep track of patients, as well as to keep track of immunizations that children receive. Mondays and Thursdays we do the immunization clinics and the antenatal care, so these are very busy days. Last monday they basically taught us the charting system, and Thursday Lisa and I had to run much of the clinic on our own. Luckily, they can't leave us entirely alone as many of the women do not speak English, so we have to have one of the other nurses help us translate. Typically immunizations in the clinic cost anywhere from 30 to 200 KSH, which is the equivalent of 50 cents to 3 dollars, and A doctor consultation is 100 KSH, about $1.35. Tuesday and wednesday we spent shadowing and doing recording for the physician, George. George is one of the most impressive physicians I have ever met. He's incredibly knowledgeable and relates so well to his patients, and has spent his entire career working with refugees, on HIV/AIDS projects, and with various NGOs. He basically encompasses all I would like to be in healthcare. He also loves to teach and explain things to us, so I feel like I have gained more clinical knowledge in the last few weeks than I have in months. However, like everything here, there are certainly times things get overwhelming. This day came last Thursday (and carried over to Friday). After spending the day with the dozens and dozens of patients at the child immunization clinic (and making more kids cry than I would ever care to. . .), Our roommate came to the clinic and found out that she had malaria. Then, George let us know that he would not be in the office Friday as he was attending the funeral of a former coworker of his who was shot when he was going back to Sudan to continue his work with his NGO. It took me about 12 hours to digest this story, only in time to get to the clinic Friday for the nurses to tell Lisa and I that we would be 'taking patients' on our own. Now, by 'taking patients' they meant that we were supposed to be seeing the patients, getting their histories, ordering labs and tests, and then diagnosing and prescribing their medications. We. Were. Clueless. After a few days of learning, we knew all of the basic things to look for: Malaria, HIV, Typhoid, URTIs, and worms, and so we knew when we should order tests for those. But actual prescription of medications?! So we just solved this by checking everything with the nurses and pharmacists who were around, and one of the nurses made sure to check all of our patients before they left. Still, it was unnerving and I hope that we aren't put in that situation again. On the bright side, I am loving working in the clinic, and I am really enjoying learning about the various public health issues. Some of the issues we see are incredibly challenging and emotionally tasking. But there are also some cases when we are really able to help someone who would otherwise have no access to care, and that's a really great feeling.

Well, we've survived another Monday. Back at it tomorrow. I'll do my best to be more diligent with updates. If anyone gets bored, shoot me a message. I'd love to hear from you all!

---

Comments

[Alicia Banister]

Hero?
Yup, you are pretty much my hero. It is so interesting/compelling reading your stories.