The slow life

I met 4th year medical student today from UW, of all places. Random but good to have another white guy in kumasi. He's not a volunteer. He's here through UW, but it's nice having him around the hospital because he is very good at explaining things I don't know, which is a lot. The hospital work so far has been rather slow. Then again, the pace of most things in Ghana is rather slow. I'm in Tafo Hospital, which is a government hospital. It's not a large hospital and they don't have a big operation theater. They only have a few units: Recovery, x-Ray, Psychiatry, Maturnity and family planning.

The first few days I spent in one of the consulting rooms. About seventy percent of the time, it's malaria. I now know all the tell-tale signs of malaria. Most of the symptons are expected; sore joints, fever, diahrrea, vomitting, etc. But one of the early symptons I hadn't heard of before was having a bitter taste in their mouths. If the person doesn't have malaria, they usually have hypertension. Otherwise, not much else comes through the door.

I then spent a week in the recovery room, which is very very laid back. The recovery room is where patients are sent after seeing a doctor and are monitored, given IVs and given shots. When I was working, I spent my time giving injections, putting in IVs (which is a little scary the first time) and taking vitals (BP, respiratory, heart rate). Otherwise, I just sat and chatted with the nurses. On my busiest day, 5 people were admitted to the recovery unit. On the slowest day, 1 person was admitted. Even the nurses think the recovery ward is a little boring. It's such a strane contrast to the American perception of medicine. In American hospitals, if you aren't busy, then you're slacking off. People are busy, always running around. Here, people are rarely in a rush in all things.

I spent another week in the psychiatric unit, which I had thought would be interesting. Unfortunately all the examinations are done in twi, so it was a little anti-climactic. From what I could tell, most of the cases were epilepsy. Although the psychiactric unit wasn't terribly entertaining, at least they kept me busy doing paperwork and filling out perscriptions. While this particular hospital doesn't offer much variety, they manage to keep me far busier than I was in China and India. Everyone speaks better english here as well so there are always people to talk to and eager to make conversation. Ironically, while everyone can speak good english, they all speak twi to me and try to teach me as much as possible so by the end of two months, I'll be fluent. I'm skeptical.

Yesterday was a bit more eventful. The other volunteers and I did something called outreach where we went to an orphanage and cleaned and dressed wounds of the children. It was a nice change of pace. Most of the time was actually spent playing with the children rather than doing any medical work, but was still enjoyable. One of the little ones crawled up on my lap and took a nice little nap. We get to go next week as well and will get to also care for the adults. Hypertension is the most common problem so we will be taking blood pressure and educating them on hypertension.

Today I spent time in the small theater where they only do minor surgeries. The dermatologist was taking skin samples for biopsy. The UW medical student is going to do his residency in dermatology so he was very knowledgable about the conditions. I think I learned more today from him than I have anywhere else during my travels.

I move to a larger hospital in another week or so where I will have the opportunity to see more. I know this blog is a little uneventful, but so is my work in the hospital. While I do very little, it's still nice to get a general sense of what medicine is like in other countries. Maybe next time I'll have some good stories to write about. I hope everyone is well at home. LEt me know how all your lives are going.