Back to work in the hospital, it was a bit of a stressful week. We spent most of our time in the male ward learning more about tropical diseases, but the week just seemed harder than most for some reason.
Monday was very exciting, as they often are here- the surgeries that have kind of piled up over the weekend all got done, so I saw several C-sections, got to really assist one, we saw the craziest appendectomy ever (the appendix had grown to be literally about 8 or 10 inches long!), but none compared to this guy with horrible peritonitis. Peritonitis is basically when you have a generalized puss-y infection of your abdominal cavity. They cut him open and this incredibly foul smelling liquid puss just squirted out, having been building up pressure for who knows how long. They took out his guts, which were all lined in this yellow, bacteria-laden puss stuff, and basically just had to scrub his intestines clean bit by bit. They then, and this is absolutely terrible and tragic, washed his whole abdominal cavity out with tap water. Tap water which we don't even drink, it's so incredibly not sterile. I suppose they had no choice- they certainly don't have gallons of sterile saline sitting around- but it was tough to watch. He died on Tuesday.
We also met Johnny, another new volunteer (there have been quite a few recently!). He too is a med student, and will also be helping out at the hospital. We got to see Amy (the respiratory therapist) at work too, especially because the hospital got an oxygen tank over the weekend (WOOOO!)!! She really has saved some lives this week, it's been great to see.
In addition to all this, on Monday Anne Marie was patient advocate extraordinaire. Apparently exploding out of "getting acquainted with the hospital" mode and kicking into "get stuff done" mode, she got a found a patient with appendicitis who had been here for 2 days and got him actually scheduled for surgery (this was the crazy one you've just read about, in fact!); she found a little kid who had re-broken his leg which had been in traction for a month, and got an ortho consult, Xray, and got it re-set for him in three hours; in short, she made things happen. The patients really need someone who cares to come around, basically just doing rounds, and pushing things through hat have fallen through the cracks. It was great.
Wednesday, dear readers, your hero's health took a turn for the worse. As I lay in bed, all achy and sad, making the most of being sick and getting a day off to read, I realized that this could be Malaria - after all, two of our roommates had already contracted the super-easy-to-cure-but-only-if-you-get-treated disease. I got tested, but no, I was only milking a cold or something, so I happily went back to reading. Anne Marie stayed home to take care of me. Frankly, I kind of think we both just needed a day off.
Thursday and Friday I threw myself into a project - getting two oxygen concentrators they apparently have in a back corner of the maternity ward to work. Oxygen concentrators, as I'm sure my worthy readers have pieced together, are amazing machines that concentrate oxygen out of the air in real time, as a patient breathes- to about 95%, even, which would be outrageously useful for babies who've been in fetal distress. I was told that the machines, which were donated by the US, work but require a transformer to get the 240V here down to 120V (plus an adapter to get the plug to fit). In the operating theater, I found an old voltage stabilizer that did both of these things! But no fuse. So I began an epic search, all around Iganga, for a 10 amp fuse- a nothing part. But here in Uganda, there are no Home Depots or Lowes. There are tons of shacks, however, with "technicians" who have taken apart every piece of broken consumer electronics they can find and sell the working parts. Sadly, 10 amp fuses are pretty heavy duty, and are not found in VCRs.
But on Friday, after scouring for a few hours, I found a bona-fide electronics parts shop on the other end of town, run by this awesome Indian dude. He gave us some free 5 and 6 amp fuses to try, but we ended up just buying another voltage stabilizer from him. It was amazing how refreshing it was to feel like he wasn't a pushy salesman or trying to take advantage of us. It's definitely why we decided to buy this pretty expensive machine from him. That, plus the hospital does have two concentrators, so two voltage stabilizers makes sense.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be. The concentrators powered up but didn't work, and when I took them apart to see why, I found that both were missing the circuit board that controls them. I can only guess why this would be, but probably someone had plugged them directly into the 240V power here and they'd fried, and when a technician saw this took out the boards but couldn't replace them, as the manufacturer is somewhere in Idaho or something. I was very disheartened by this, but don't really know what I can do about it in the remaining two weeks we're working in the hospital.
Jenny also left Friday- sad.
We're going back to Sipi Falls this weekend, and are all super excited!
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