I made myself get up this morning to go for a run before clinic. I went to bed relatively early so it shouldn't have been an issue and yet I was still exhausted. The air conditioner in my room is next to my bed and I start freezing at night which wakes me up. So I turn it off and put it on the fan. Hope no one notices that too much. Again heat is so much better then cold. The run was rough but I pushed myself to finish, with the thought of a hot cup of Nescafé waiting for me when I returned.
Today in clinic I worked with Dr. Puspa. It turned out to be such a busy day which was quite deceiving since it didn't look that crowded when I was coming back from my run. We see an average of about 170 patients probably per day, with the past week being close if not over 200. The Nepalese doctors are our powerhouses in getting through them fast as we the students take our places in doing surgeries and doing full H&P's. Well anyway my morning was quite eventful. It started off with doing a diabetic ulcer debridement on the small toe of the man's right foot. I'm going to just say it right now, I really don't like feet. For those that don't know the process it is a physician's way of giving a pedicure. I wash and clean the ulcer and then take a scalpel and slice away all the skin around it (it doesn't hurt the patient) under the wound edges are clean level. Getting it to bleed a little is always a good sign, showing that the patient has at least perfusion to that area. Well he bleed for quite some time before I bandaged him up and he was ready to go. It was quite a spa day for him and he loved every minute of it....as for me, not so much. After the debridement I gave a few patients shots, both IM and IV, took out sutures and saw a few more patients who came in for cleaning and redressing of their surgical wound. I also saw another poor baby with jaundice and ascites from biliary atresia that needs immediate hospital admission and both Sorsogon and Legaspi hospitals don't have what she needs. Therefore we are sending her on bus to Manila and will follow up when we get there. I hope she'll be able to be treated, because her family is very poor and at this point all of the funds from our clinic have been used on multiple patients with serious conditions that also need to be treated.
I went into the OR to grab some hand sanitizer after seeing a few more patients with Puspa and was grabbed by Celine to help with the syndactyly surgery that was being done by Sean with Zach as another assistant. There was a lot of blood and it was very cool to see even though I was just assisting with whatever I could. The girl had two beautiful fingers in the end and she was one hell of a trooper for a 14 year old girl. It was a complex procedure but a success nonetheless.
Lunch was awesome because there were mangos! And at this point they've stopped slicing them up and put out whole mangos so I get more!! Yes I know that for me is an excitement in my life. We all laid on our bedroom floor after lunch and took power naps. No, I'm not laying on my bed in my scrubs. Ain't nobody got time for that!
Back at clinic I was with Puspa for the rest of the afternoon just seeing patient after patient after patient. I gave an IV shot of ceftriaxone to one patient and assisted another man with his colostomy. That is always a fun thing to see...someone's bowel outside of their abdomen. Especially when their like his which was previously wrapped with a plastic shopping bag. He needs surgery to have it re-anastomosed which again we have no funds to sponsor until next year. The rest of our patients were pretty straight forward with nothing too out of the ordinary at this point. Lots of coughs and colds, possible TB's, UTI's (which are very common in men it seems like here), lots of hypertension and a few breast complaints that I got to do the breast exams on. Hypertension is so prevalent here it amazes me sometimes. Again, I think the high salt diet filled with lots of meat and few vegetables is a big contributor. Clinic went for quite sometime and we didn't get done until around 5:30 where at that point I was stumbling back got the dorms.
Nothing much happened for the day. We had French fries at dinner which was quite the surprise. After we all decided to go into Sorsogon to get things from the local supermarket Savemore (like conditioner which I was in dire need of) and use the Internet (the reason these are now posted). Im sitting in Bigg's Diner as we speak just typing away on my iphone debating whether i should risk the traveler's diarrhea and get a mango shake.
Alright well I'm just going to end it here. What happens in Sorsogon stays in Sorsogon.
Here are some pictures of my wonderful colleagues at the clinic....oh and of course Filipino babies and cool pathologies
Pop some tags in Sorsogon!
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