Nalerigu Day 7

Greetings from Northern Ghana!

I'm sure you're all interested to know that my traveller's diarrhea has resolved. Hooray! I was back to full strenght this morning. Today was another interesting day as usual. We started out in the peds wards where another child had died overnight. Jessie and I split the room into two and got several of the kids seen on our own today. It's nice to feel sort of independent. I wasn't ready for that when we first started. One interesting fact I learned today was that the patient with the blue spots all over didn't have a blue spot disease at all. When we actually were able to talk with the family we found that the child did have lesions over their entire body, but the blue color was actually violet dye that the family had used for the wounds as a home remedy!!!! The child does have a fever and most likely septic, so remains very sick, but it's nice to know what the blue discoloration was from. Amazing!! They sure fooled me.

A happy story for the day was that one child we have been seeing on the wards who had been in status epilepticus (seizing for too long) actually sat up to eat and drink today and was talking with his mother. We were very concerned that this child would be neurologically devistated from the event, but are happy he is improving. This was one patient where we feel we truly saved this patient's life. It's a good feeling.

The morning was also filled with surgeries. Most of the surgeries of the day were gross. :) The surgeries today have led to the disease of the day which is osteomyelitis. Osteomyelitis is essentially an infection of the bone. Most of the cases of osteomyelitis are initially treated with IV antibiotics. The problem in Africa...people don't come for IV antibiotics. So today a child with osteomyelitis came who had an open would with his osteomyelitic fibula (bone in the leg) sticky out. My attending touched the bone tip and an entire piece of the bone was removed (see picture). There were several other patients today that had similar symptoms.

Another interesting case today was a patient with a cystic hygroma (see pic; mass in neck). The cystic hygroma was drained today, but without surgical resection it will persist. We won't have a surgeon here again that can do such surgeries until June, so she will have to wait until that time.

Wound therapy and incision and drainage of abscesses were also frequent and disgusting today. I have left out some pretty gruesome pics of this for those who don't enjoy that. I wouldn't want anyone to faint reading this blog!

On to discuss lunch. :) For lunch we were served another Ghanian dish which this time I did not eat. The food was called "bean cake", but it looked like a piece of liver or spleen to me so I passed and ate rice instead. The rest of the volunteers assured me it tasted like beans, but I felt like just trusting them on that one.

This afternoon was excrutiatingly hot!! I took a nap for a short time, but when it's 100 degrees in the house napping is difficult. I then headed back to the hospital with Jessie and Joe the med student to see more patients. The afternoon was fun, but the heat was overwhelming.

At dinnertime, we were greated by a new family that have come from Kansas and will be living here for 6 months to 1 year. She is a nurse and he is an accountant. They have three children. Their mission is to coordinate all of the guests and volunteers that come to the village. I bring this up because I want others to know that you don't have to be medically trained to help out. I look forward to getting to know them more.

After dinner, we had an evening of fellowship which included song and prayer. It also included chocolate cake!!! There are truly wonderful people who are here. It is great to meet people that have dedicated their lives to serving those less fortunate than them.

Tonight my blog is shorter since the evening was longer. We will be losing one West Virginia student and his preceptor tomorrow, but will be gaining another preceptor and two students from Hong Kong all in one day!!!

I hope as usual you are all well and staying cooler than we are!! Tomorrow is another day of rounding and clinic which is almost certain to bring in something interesting. I'll hope that another man cut by a machette (sp?) doesn't come crawling down the clinic floor again! Best wishes as always!

Jill