Amelia Wiggins’ Blog

amelia earhart

i flew over the indian ocean today! we have 2 far away clinics that we send doctors to every friday. the plane is a 4 seater, just big enough for me, 2 docs and the pilot named jhraak (pronounced shark which i thought was funny). i’ll upload the pics once i edit them. anyway we went first over sibhaya lake, which is on the map i posted, and landed at the first clinic, mabibi. there we saw 4 patients. it is one of the wealthier towns so not as many sick people. usually in the mobile clinics we see anywhere from 20-50 patients. from there we loaded the plane again and headed out over the indian ocean…beautiful!! in the fall (sept) you can see whales and sharks but not today. and you can also see hippos, crocodiles and other african wildlife in the lake but we didn’t see any today :(  we landed in another town for the next clinic. there we saw about 20 patients between the 3 of us.   The view was so amazing and the weirdest part was the landing strip… or the lack of landing strip I should say, we simply took of and came down in a big field! Definitely a highlight so far!!very frustrating today was a 32 year old man with HIV, he could not understand why i could not start him on ARV (antiretrovirals). he had been to the hospital 2 days before for kaposi sarcoma, a skin condition that is an aids defining illness. on his records the doc had written, ’start arvs NOW” so here he was scared to death and wanting his meds. the problem was that we need certain lab results before giving someone arvs. it’s a long process of being sure their liver functions properly, they don’t have hep B, checking kidney function and blood level…. after that the patient then starts a training program to be sure they are responsible enough to take the arvs. its a strict schedule and once you start you can not stop or the hiv will develop resistance and then we have a real problem. our patient was at the first step of waiting for his lab results. i explained the process to him through a translator that i’m not sure even understood english. at the end he kept saying, ‘no i need them now’ since the note from the hospital said NOW. you could see the fear in his eyes. people here sometimes don’t realize they can live without arvs for many years, when they hear they are hiv + they hear an immediate death sentence. i tried my best to tell him he was well enough to wait a few weeks. in the end i don’t know if he understood. i can only hope he did.  that in a nut shell is the most frustrating part of being here. i want to talk to these people but i’m stuck watching a translator, who knows nothing about medicine and very little about english, try to get a history and then relay it to me. i wonder how much pertinent information is slipping through the cracks…

bats

An exciting evening at the Fredlunds…we had a bat terrorize us. Their home is huge, large rooms, with 2 story high ceilings, each wall is mostly made up of windows the rest of the house built of wood. Basically it’s an overgrown log cabin build on the side of a hill/cliff overlooking the valley. The view is breathtaking (pictures soon I promise!). anyway, on the main level there are 3 big rooms open to each other, the kitchen, dining area and living room all with the high ceilings. A few nights ago as we were making dinner a bat swooped in almost hitting us in the head. I ducked and screamed along with Alima, their daughter in law. The men, Dr. Fredlund, Ben their son, and keith their nephew, (ben, alima, and keith are all just visiting while on ‘holiday’) after getting a good laugh at us girls they set out to catching the silly bat. It flew around forever, with the high ceilings we couldn’t catch it with anything so they tried to shoo it into a room with open windows, that didn’t work either. The stupid bat just kept flying around swooping down at our heads and banging into the walls. Finally it stopped, which doesn’t make me feel any better because it’s still in the house…hopefully not in my room! Made me think of all the funny bat stories from the cabin and mammoth cave! Remember mom?!!    

pictures!

click on each picture to make them bigger.

today i went to work in a town at a mobile clinic about an hour away. it was very fun. i saw my own patients with a translator. most came for HIV medication refills. one lady i admitted to the hospital for a TB drug reaction. it had caused hepatitis and she had textbook symptoms, something i will rarely see in the US. TB drug rxn unfortunately is very dangerous. i admitted her to our hospital so i’ll be able to follow her care.

 the view as i walk to work

 the path i walk to work, it’s about 5 min. from the hospital

 2 patients waiting to be seen in the clinic

 the clinic where i spend most of my day

 the window from my room…see what i mean about being outside! i do close this at night

 my room!

surgery

so i’ve seen lots of amazing patients and been able to do tons of procedures like draining TB from a man’s chest, lumbar punctures, sutures, draining abscess!!

i helped with a hip revision surgery today (yay!!) it was uneventful but our suction broke half way through the case. so we asked for the ’sisters’ (the nurses) to call maintenance. the sisters scurried off and reported back that  maintenance’s phone was broken, we could not get a hold of them. we all paused for a moment and said, oh, okay. then we completed the case…without suction. it struck me as funny…shouldn’t maintenance at least fix their own phone?! Then again this is
south Africa and that’s the way things run here. Ji haven’t really done much else besides work (which is fine cause i love working with these patients. they always have usual cases and such sweet people). this weekend however i hope to explore with a few others docs. there are a lot of young people from the UK and south africa all either doing an intership or on staff with the hospital. so i’m sure i’ll find people to sightsee with. tonight the fredlunds invited me to a bible study, so i’m looking forward to that.

it’s a cool place here, since most of the doctors (and a lot of the patients) are christians they have the ’sisters’ pray with the patients before surgery. which i really like.

other than that it’s just hot. very very hot. over 40 c today…i don’t even know how hot that is but i think my blood is boiling! i’ve never gone to work in a tank top, shorts,  and flip flops before but that’s how they do it here.  it’s just unbearable if you don’t! i do love the relaxed atmosphere but have gotten used to the quick pace of american hospitals. everything here takes a good couple of hours longer to do. oh well. we learn patience!

hope you’re all well. thanks again for the comments. i really enjoy getting them. it helps ward off homesickness!

one day down

hey guys,

first let me say, thanks for the comments! they email them to me and i read it and then approve it for others to see, but the internet is really slow so i’m not going to approve them, i do read all of them though, you just won’t see them on the blog.  i don’t have much time cause i have to get back for dinner but just wanted you guys to know i had a good day. this is very different from my last trip to south africa. i will definitely need a few days to adjust. the weather is HOT and STICKY we have no ac and basically live in a big house on a hill with huge windows (with no screens) so it’s like i’m camping outside. i do have a mosquito net around my bed which is a huge blessing. anyway to wild life is the big hurdle for me right now, roaches and mice poop and many more bugs i don’t know the names of are everywhere…ahhh. i’ve turned into a little bit of a city girl i think. so like i say i’m adjusting. 

dr Fredlund and his family, (the people i live with, and the doc i’m learning from) are wonderful, they have been missionaries here for 28years.  i know i’ll learn tons and will be so blessed by them!

for the hospital it’s interesting to see how they manage patients differently over here with such a lack of resources. i’ve seen lots of sick people and unfortunately it’s only been 1 day and i’ve already heard the drs say, well there is nothing else we can do. send them home. i know in america there was much more we could do. so that’s been hard to swallow. i will do a lot of procedures though, i drained a labrial abscess and marsupilized it all by myself today mom!! (for those that don’t know what that is i don’t recommend looking it up!) 

 so off to a good start but i am very home sick. much more than i expected. i don’t have internet at the house like i thought i would so i can only use the computers at the hospital therefore i’m not sure i’ll be able to post as often as i would like. we’ll see how things go.

hope you’re all having a great day. love you and miss you,

amelia

i haven’t taken an pictures yet either but i will and i’ll try to download them when i do! i have not seen an elephant wandering the streets yet, but i’ll keep my eyes open!

i’m in durban!

hey family and friends, i’m safe and sound in a hotel in durban. tomorrow, shakes (my tour guide who is very nice) and i will continue on to mseleni which is 4 hours from here. we get started at about 8am. so far the trip has been great, very uneventful…which i know calms a lot of your nerves! please continue to pray for the last leg of our journey that the Lord will continue to protect me as He has thus far. i’m so excited to be here but am missing you all too. i love you lots, will try to post more tomorrow so you know i’m finally there.

amelia

Paradise!

hey guys, here’s a link to the weather in KwaZulu Natal so you can keep tabs on how much rain and sunshine we’re getting! the red circle is the general area where I’ll be staying.  Also, there is a link for the time zone difference.

KwaZulu Natal Weather

KwaZulu Natal Time Zone

The Adventure Begins Soon!

Hey family and friends,

This is my blog!! (yes i have a blog, me, the girl that hates technology!) Anyway, i’m so excited about my trip, less than 2 weeks away! (i leave jan. 2nd and return feb.1)  i’m thrilled that you can all get a taste of what i’m experiencing while i am at Mseleni Hospital through this blog. So feel free to log on, check out the latest, and write comments. I should be able update the blog regularly.

One request i have, would you please say a prayer for me, dan (as he won’t be going with me), the hospital staff, and especially the patients i’ll be taking care of every time you log on. Thanks, i love you all and am excited to share this next adventure with you!

Amelia

“And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” 1John 3:23