I\u2019ve spent 3 days on female ward and 1 day in the HIV clinic this week.\u00a0 From a medicine perspective this has probably been my favorite week due to the variety of pathology.\u00a0 Also, before coming here I had never actually encountered any HIV+ patients.\u00a0 The HIV clinic is quite busy and seems to provide great benefit, as most of the patients we saw where just checking in for regular lab draws and med checks.\u00a0 The majority of them have undetectable viral loads, which is great.\u00a0 I was working with Dr. Timothy, who has been an excellent teacher, and also gets flustered randomly in kind of a hilarious way.\u00a0 The female ward is basically a general medicine ward for ladies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In addition to time in the clinic I have been working on a project for Dr. James, my supervisor.\u00a0 He wanted to know the reasons for which patients are referred to larger centers, so I have been going through a notebook with entries for each of the referrals over the last year.\u00a0 It seems the most common reason for referral is a head injury or stroke and subsequent need for a head CT to evaluate whether or not the patient has intracranial bleeding.\u00a0 I have come across some pretty exotic diagnoses in my time in the referral book, however, including Kaposi sarcoma, TB meningitis, Brucellosis, and cerebral malaria, to name a few.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spent more time the last week with two Ugandan students just starting their third year of training, Damian and Zam Zam (for real, Zam Zam).\u00a0 They asked me a bunch of questions about life in America, for which their only source of information is American television.\u00a0 They think all medical professionals in the US are extremely attractive, then I showed up and confirmed all their suspicions (just kidding).\u00a0 We talk about medicine quite a bit, too, differences in training, and life generally.\u00a0 At night the girls in the guest house and I have been kicking it with the six year-old son of the medical director, Gideon, and his eleven year-old buddy, Agre.\u00a0 They sneak around our house while we\u2019re reading on the porch and try to jump out and scare us.\u00a0 Usually I can hear or see them coming.\u00a0 Usually.\u00a0 Last night I tried to teach them how to make fart noises with their armpits.\u00a0 They thought it was hilarious.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A couple nights ago I played in a hospital soccer tournament with the crew from the operating theater – they have uniforms and everything.\u00a0 They take it quite seriously, and I\u2019m basically out there in skates on my vans.\u00a0 If only I had packed cleats!\u00a0 I\u2019m beginning to seriously crave some creature comforts.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t taken a warm shower in 3 weeks, and I miss pizza like a caged bird misses flight.\u00a0 Freedom is pizza.\u00a0 All in all, though, I have enjoyed the simplicity of life here.\u00a0 It has eliminated a number of frivolities, and the lack of distractions forces me to read quite a bit (I knocked out Anna Karenina in two weeks, which, other than some of the Harry Potter books and the Bible, is probably the longest book I\u2019ve ever read). I\u2019m learning plenty, about medicine, life, and mission.\u00a0 It will take me a while to process it all once I\u2019m home, but I\u2019m quite glad for the experience!\u00a0 Thanks for following along!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve spent 3 days on female ward and 1 day in the HIV clinic this week.\u00a0 From a medicine perspective […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}