Another clinic day
January 12th, 2009 Posted in UncategorizedToday was another day of rounding and clinic followed with procedures. I had some interesting cases in clinic. I diagnosed a woman with HIV and admitted a man with cellulitis. He was in a motorbike accident two weeks ago with a couple of superficial skin lacerations. These openings caused infection to spread inside his leg and today he was unable to walk. I also saw many cases of malaria and a man with a patellar (knee cap) fracture. The treatment for this is to surgically wire the patella back together, but he chose to go for “local treatment” instead. It is very common for Ghanaians to choose the local methods of treatment, especially for bone deformities. In this case, local treatment is basically a form of splinting and wrapping. There isn’t anyone at the hospital that is able to perform the necessary surgery in this case.
I was also able to scrub into a cesarean section and I got to suture the incision closed at the end of the case. I also drained a hydrocele (collection of fluid in the scrotum). There was about 1400 mLs that I pulled off! The day ended on a low note when we did several ultrasounds. We had three Intrauterine Fetal Demises (miscarriages) and one woman that will likely miscarry soon. Three of them are admitted now to monitor them for bleeding and see if they need a D & C tomorrow.
The dust from the Harmattan was much less today and we were able to see lots of stars on our walk home from the hospital. Usually we are lucky if we can spot even a couple because of the dust.
Here is another link of pictures to view:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2015742&l=4404b&id=162801085