Chikinkata

Every week has gotten busier and busier. Monday of last week I spent the day at Choma Hospice. The hospice centers here are different than the ones in the States. They have primarily AIDS patients, however, most of them are expected to improve significantly and return to their villages. So while it is hard to see, it is much more encouraging compared to your typical hospice center at home.

Tuesday I spent the day at Dr. Jain’s clinic. This clinic was started about 5 years ago and is run by Dr. Jain and his wife, called Dr. (Mrs.) Jain. They make a great team and have a wonderful clinic. They are highly respected in the community and do incredible work. Dr. Jain is a very talented surgeon. He is a general surgeon but basically operates on anyone and anything that needs operated on…and at any time of the day, no matter what. He is phenomenal. And his wife is too. She is a gynecologist so she sees all the female patients who come into the clinic. They are from India but have been here for 33 years… they have incredible hearts for the people of Zambia.

On Wednesday, I was able to visit and help out in the ART (AntiRetroviral Therapy) pediatric clinic at Choma General Hospital. This was sad and heartbreaking, to put names and faces with the completely innocent side of HIV/AIDS. These children were beautiful but also very obviously unwell. As good of an experience as it was, it was heartbreaking to see several 12-year-old boys who were the size of 7 year-olds, and with breathing difficulties, visual impairments, malnutrition and many other health problems.

Thursday and Friday were spent at Chikinkata Hospital – the second most prestigious AIDS research hospital in Africa. We spent the 2 days in the different units of the hospital. I spent my time in the Intensive Care Unit, in the nursing classroom with some of the nursing students, in the Out-Patient Department (kind of like an ER), and in the Female medical/surgical ward. It was a really short visit, but I loved my time there and loved that hospital…it was much nicer than any of the medical facilities we have seen so far! My favorite part was working in the OPD because I got to take vitals and talk to the patients about the reasons why the came to the hospital…in Tonga. It was very challenging because of the language barrier. I would say, “Cinzi ciza?”…(or something like that), which means, “Why did you come here today?” And then they thought I spoke Tonga. So they would rattle off their reasons while I’m frantically look at my cheat sheet and trying to identify the Tonga words for headache, backache, fever, etc. But it was so fun and I loved it. I felt very helpful and learned a lot so much in doing that. Busy week, but fantastic.

Here are some pictures from this last week. 

This is their "ambulance" for bringing people to the hospital from the villages.

Working on my IV skills