Busy Week

This week has been really busy. On Monday I did rounds with Dr. Dickens and then we went to clinic. There are not many rooms for clinic so one of the med students was in the same room with us. They started seeing people and I was in the middle of them watching. Dr. Dickens was seeing the ob/gyn patients while the med student was seeing general patients. About lunch time Dr. Dickens had to leave to go do some ultra sounds and I stayed with the med student and watched some more, at one point there were a lot of ob patients and not a lot of general and so the med student did some ob/gyn to help Dr. Dickens. On one of the ladies that was pregnant he asked to go to the other room to examine her, I went to watch, he then explained tome how you measure the pregnancy and how to feel for the head and stuff and let me feel and measure, and find the heart beat which was really cool. On Tuesday I did rounds again with Dr. Dickens and after rounds they asked if I could help at peads (Pediatrics), I agreed and have been helping there all week. When we examine a patient we have to first look at there card and record the opd number, name, age, sex, and name of the town that they live in. After the examination we then record the diagnosis. Normally one of the Ghanaian students or nurses would do that and interpreting at the same time but it is hard when you have two doctors to interpret for and you have to write everything down in the book also. This week while helping in peads I have been the one writing in the book, which is a very big job in it self, especially for peads because they do the so many kids so fast. We have broken our record of the number of kids that we have seen three times this week, on Monday they saw 157, Tuesday we saw 135, Wednesday we saw 161, Thursday we saw 120, and Friday we saw 186. That is a lot of kids for two doctors to see in 7 hours. Most of the kids that we see in peads have malaria and a lot of them have severe anemia from the malaria. A lot of the kids have to get admitted to the hospital for a blood transfusion because of how severe the anemia is. The nurses at the registration desk are very good because they can tell when there is a kids that is really sick and needs to be admitted to the hospital and will rush them to us so they don't have to wait in line to be seen. I have had a lot of fun this week and it was really busy, after clinic we had something almost every night. Monday night we had a lot of the volunteers over to the Dickens house for supper, on Tuesday there was a going away party at house 6 for James who is one of the med students we was leaving on Wednesday, Wednesday I went to bed early after going to bed late the last couple of nights, on Thursday we had station meeting which is where all the missionaries and the volunteers that want to get together to have a church type service, and Friday we had a girls night and all the girls got together and had snacks and watched a girly movie. I had a very fun week this week and have really loved getting to actually help at the hospital even if it was just writing kids down in the books. We have also had 5 new volunteers come in this week, on Wednesday we had a couple come in, the wife is a med student and the husband is very good with computers, Thursday we had another med student come in, and Friday a couple that are both med students. It has been a very busy week, but a lot of fun :).