{"id":61,"date":"2015-04-23T15:45:22","date_gmt":"2015-04-23T15:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/?p=61"},"modified":"2015-04-23T15:45:22","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T15:45:22","slug":"palliative-care-in-macha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/2015\/04\/23\/palliative-care-in-macha\/","title":{"rendered":"Palliative Care in Macha?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though life expectancy in Zambia is lower than developed countries, I have seen many elderly patients in Macha.\u00a0 Some come for regular check-ups for their chronic conditions such as diabetes or hypertension, but some come for acute illness.\u00a0 Some come with \u201cweakness\u201d because of their older age.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With limited resources, we do not have much to offer for their palliative care.\u00a0 Currently, we have an elderly lady at the hospital due to generalized weakness.\u00a0 She sleeps most of the day, and does not eat much.\u00a0 But, when I go see her, she smiles and says she is fine.\u00a0 My Zambian attending and I try to come up with her care plan, but it is very limited what we can do here.\u00a0 One of the nurses mentioned that there was a nursing home in nearby large town, but it seems that it is not operational right now.\u00a0 I regretfully ordered to place a NG tube for feeding\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is another elderly female patient, petite and a big smile on her face every time I go see her in the hospital.\u00a0 She was admitted due to \u201ca wound\u201d on her breast for more than one year.\u00a0 It is about the size of a quarter, granulated and had some foul smell, but without pain.\u00a0 We also noticed that there is a palpable mass on her another breast.\u00a0 The axillary lymph nodes on the side of the wound are very hard and enlarged quite a bit.\u00a0 No doubt this is breast cancer, and already advanced.\u00a0 We performed biopsy, but it takes a while to get the result back.\u00a0 Besides, the result probably does not change our care plan for her \u2013 observation.\u00a0 We discharged her from the hospital today, and recommended her to get some wound care at the local clinic.\u00a0 When I asked her to take a picture with me, she smiled, and said yes.\u00a0 I showed her the picture, and she laughed and made even a bigger smile.\u00a0 As knowing a close American family friend being a breast cancer survivor, being a cancer patient myself, and just lost my own mother with pancreatic cancer, it was a heart-broken moment to discharge her while she had a big smile on her face.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No good answers or solutions to these situations.\u00a0 Only God knows, and I hope he helps them all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"20150423_085944\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though life expectancy in Zambia is lower than developed countries, I have seen many elderly patients in Macha.\u00a0 Some come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/taiseisuzuki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}