Halfway through week 2!\u00a0 Today I watched a C-Section, sat in on the GYN clinic, and then there was another C-Section after lunch.\u00a0 I have been on the maternity ward this week with a Dutch OBGYN who has been working here for 4 years and a Ugandan medical student named Fred.\u00a0 Today, we were joined by a Ugandan physician – she was the one that performed today\u2019s sections.\u00a0 All the Ugandan students are expected to be competent at C-Sections when they graduate, so I saw Fred do a good chunk of two sections earlier in the week.\u00a0 The maternity ward is pretty steady – plenty of business.\u00a0 The hospital has a midwifery program and the midwives handle most of the vaginal deliveries, while the physicians round on patients and handle the surgeries.\u00a0 They also oversee deliveries from time to time.\u00a0 For the most part OBGYN is the same over here as back home with some caveats, namely less prenatal care, HIV prophylaxis is something to consider more frequently, there is no cautery for surgeries so they can be quite bloody, and the women have more children.\u00a0 Like way more children.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Over the weekend I went with Dr. James, a surgeon and my \u2018supervisor\u2019, to vaccinate a bunch of chickens.\u00a0 I mean a BUNCH.\u00a0 I originally thought they were owned by the hospital, or that it was a public health measure (they were flu vaccines, bird flu, I dunno), but turns out they are just Dr. James\u2019s chickens.\u00a0 He raises them and sells them for meat to supplement his his income and help a young man who also tends to the chickens.\u00a0 It was kind of surreal and hilarious.\u00a0 He would say, \u201cCome here, chick-un, do not be afraid, it is just your vac-see-nay-shuuunn.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I finally made it down to the soccer \u2018pitch\u2019 outside the hospital compound.\u00a0 Men that work at the hospital and men from the community come play soccer in the evening, and I had heard about it but didn\u2019t venture down that way till yesterday.\u00a0 I showed up in the pants I wore around the hospital, a T-shirt, and my Vans feeling like Woody Harrelson from White Men Can\u2019t Jump, minus that sweet mid-range jumper.\u00a0 Honestly, I had no idea what was going on for a while.\u00a0 The \u2018pitch\u2019, first of all, is a scene from the D-Day beach storming in Saving Private Ryan.\u00a0 It is sloping in more than one direction with paths running through it, rocks, and dirt mounds ready to rob you of your feet at any time.\u00a0 On top of that, we were just playing on one half and the goals were bricks that had been set up, one on either end of the half.\u00a0 So the object, I assumed, was to hit the brick with the ball.\u00a0 Literally no one was going for goal.\u00a0 The other team would get the ball 10 feet from our brick and just play the ball back, switch it, dink around with it, and I was defending a brick no one was attacking.\u00a0 I finally figured out they basically just play keep-away.\u00a0 They play really good soccer (football).\u00a0 There are a couple of guys that can ball, for sure, and it\u2019s all one and two touch – very impressive.\u00a0 I think they\u2019re warming to me, too – yesterday I was mzungu (pronounced mih-zoon-goo, means white guy), and today a few of them were calling me Scott.\u00a0 I have even been invited to play with some of the staff from the operating room this weekend in a hospital tournament.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I got some company in the guest house after a week of solitude.\u00a0 Two Portuguese nurses who were serving at a hospital north of here came to see the NICU, and two nursing students here to rotate – one German and one Brit.\u00a0 We all wandered outside the compound last night to sample the local fare – \u2018Rolex\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s what it sounds like to me, anyway.\u00a0 I think it was \u2018rolled eggs\u2019 at one point, but it all just runs together now.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a mini omelette with tomato inside a tortilla type wrap.\u00a0 Worth the shillings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Otherwise, just grinding on the daily.\u00a0 reading, asking people to repeat things several times, and trying to learn from the experience.\u00a0 It has been quite humbling in a number of ways – not being familiar with the language spoken by the majority of the patients and struggling to understand the English spoken by the hospital staff has made everything harder.\u00a0 It\u2019s tough to rotate in a new place because the way they do everything takes a little acclimatization, but here that is compounded by the differences in the culture, the demographics, served, and the limitations of the facilities and equipment available.\u00a0 It has made me think a lot about what serving in a place like this would be like as a physician (read \u2018grown up\u2019).\u00a0 Hungry for greater perspective and more Rolex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Halfway through week 2!\u00a0 Today I watched a C-Section, sat in on the GYN clinic, and then there was another […]<\/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-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","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=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/scottbiggerstaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}