More days…

Sorry everyone for not updating this blog as regularly as I should! Our days here, while rewarding are hot and tiring so by the time I get back I’m ready to crash!

Monday morning the number of sick people on our trip had risen to three ( don’t worry they are all better now)! While I was not counted in the sick I ended up staying back because I was feeling a little sluggish and under the weather. This was a great opportunity to refresh for the rest of the week and spend some time with the kids at home!

In the afternoon I traveled to the private clinic where I helped work on a first aid handout for Hope Speaks to pass out to parents at the clinic!

Tuesday morning started with some preparation and planning for the next few days in the slums. I worked with Rachel, another Therapeutic Recreation major on a few projects such as mobiles for kids who spend most of their time on their backs!

We also got the chance to observe a support/treatment group for adults with strokes! This was super interesting to me as I will be interning in Nuero rehab this summer! After introductions were made we played the game blink as a group to target specific goals in the patient. I loved this because although the goals were very speech related, it felt like a Recreational therapy group with the introduction of a game as a modality for rehabilitation!

After a fun trip to the grocery and craft stores we headed to Katanga slum for the afternoon. Here we observed speech therapy, ran hearing screenings, and prayed with the moms about what they needed that week. It worked really well to have these different stations set up!

Wednesday (today) is when the trip got super interesting to me! I decided that instead of heading back to the clinics the last few days I would take the opportunity to shadow in a local catholic hospital for the rest of the week!

This morning we left early and arrived at St. Francis Nsambya Hospital. This turned out to be an incredible experience but gave me some extreme culture shock.

Unlike the hospitals back home which require a background check and pages of paperwork, we were able to shadow anywhere in the hospital just because Ben knew one of the doctors. We simply wrote a letter explaining why we wanted to shadow and the director of the hospital quick signed it for us so we could get right into it!

We didn’t wait for Dr. Francis to be available between patients but rather he ushered us right into the room. First we had to take of our street shoes and replace them with either crocs or slides they had provided. We walked in and were greeted by the sight of a lady receiving a colonoscopy. The doctor showed us what he was looking for and where the problem areas were for her. We then watched a scope of a mans throat which was really cool!

After these two procedure we were split into groups and given fresh sterile scrubs. These were “one size fits all” also known as a men’s 3x. My neon yellow socks I had unfortunately worn and my yellow slides, face mask and hair net really completed the look!

As soon as we were changed we were ushered into operating room 3 where a patient was being prepped for surgery. I washed my hands and arms as I was walking in but they assured us that wasn’t even really necessary.

The patient was having a laparatomy which is an exploratory surgery of the abdomen looking for intestinal obstruction. They ended up removing a section of the small intestine, removing a hernia, and giving her a stoma and colostomy bag!

This surgery was amazing to watch because they let me up close by the patient so I could see everything they were doing. They also asked me to grab iodine and pour it in a surgical bowl for them (so I can say I assisted)😂. This operating room seemed very different from what I would imagine it would look like in the US. Everyone was wearing slides, crocs, or rain boots with their scrubs. Although the actual surgeons were fully “scrubbed in” it amazed me the amount of people in the room with no gloves or anything on. It also seemed to be a very focused yet relaxed environment in a variety of ways which was interesting to me.

After the surgery we were met by a relief nurse who traded in our slides for rain boots and disposed of our used face and hair coverings. She then handed us each a bar of soap and two short lengths of gauze and told us to go shower. She also brought us two sand buckets of hot water to compliment the cold shower. Although it was not very clear what we should wash or how, we made do with what we had !

We then met up with the other groups and shared stories. One group had witnessed a c-section and another had watched a biopsy. All of us were equally amazed and shocked by what we had witnessed.

Although surgery will never be my future profession, it was amazing to see first hand the procedures and complexity of the human body. I can’t pass up these experiences that I would never be granted in more regulated and controlled US hospital environments. We are very excited to head back tomorrow and observe more!

Thank you everyone for reading this and supporting us with your prayers! Please pray for continued safety and for God to continue to work in and through us!

Also enjoy some other random pictures and any thought I have on them….