Hello all,
To sum it up, today has been a learning day. First of all we weren’t quite sure if we were on daylights savings time or not. A few of us were ready to go round at 6am….after a quick google search we realized we could have slept another hour!
We all realize how hard it’s been not having OAM at Double Harvest for a 9 or 10 day interval. It has taken us awhile to get back to where the last group left off. The Manhattan group was good at giving us the basic lay of the land, but we have now figured out staffing, charting, the clinic, patient supplies and contacts.
After a night together on the floor of the vocational building, we moved all our supplies to the clinic and were soon immersed in an onslaught of patients. Our Xray tech was late and we could not figure out how to start the Xray machine, but we could start the C-arm. The morning started out with a few masses that Dr Theut removed, a few External Fixation follow ups . I must say that every one of the returning patients brought their follow up plan papers back with them.
As the clinic was not too surgically busy, 3 of us were able to take a tap-tap to the University Hospital and re-establish contacts there. We had the chance to meet Gabe, but pretty much every other nurse and physician was new on the job. Patients now have to pay for care at the University hospital so that makes care even more chaotic. While we were there we took off casts with our bandage scissors, and removed some foreign bodies from a patients arm that a brand new pediatric ER doc could not find. Otherwise we saw some patients and changed some dressings, we were able to let them know that if necessary we could pick up some patients on Tuesday. The ride into and out of the city is wordless. Words are not invented in our language that can convey the profound devastation and both the hope and hopelessness that you see among the people.
Today started out with rounds, an I& D of a foot, and then drainage of a scrotal abscess. We were able to take inventory of stock and to get a good grip of what is and is not available. Sundays are slow days and we were able to take a few walks around the country side. We were also able to get in touch with Partners in Health at Cange and they will be sending patients with Hip fractures our way. Again, these patients fractures are a week old, and I have no doubt they would have already been fixed if we could have had continued care.
Also we were greeted by 2 new nurses and a nurse practitioner, somewhat of a surprise. We are very happy to have them join the team as they will be able to overlap care with the next team on the 19th.
Tomorrow promises to be quite busy. We have a great group here, a great mixture of personalities and talents.
Until tomorrow, Mark Asperheim
