Live.Laugh.Love.

Hello everyone!!

How are all of you?!?!? I miss you all so much! How crazy is it that I only have 2 weeks and 6 days until I come home!!! This trip has been long and short all at the same time. This week has been full of frightening things to witness, but at the same time it has been fascinating to see some of these things. Everyday working at the hospital is seriously like a horror movie that just keeps getting better and better as the days go on.

Monday came and we went to work a little late because we had to walk to the bank to pay for our amazing safari that we are going on in 2 weeks!!!! So we went in at about 11:00AM and we got there and there was a woman laying on the bed in the labor ward in the position to push and there was a leg hanging out. The baby was breach and they had to call the doctor to come and do the delivery because none of the nursing staff had the experience or knowledge on what to do. So in awe we watched as the doctor pulled out her manual and read how to deliver a breach baby and did it step by step. It was hard and amazing to watch because once the legs and arms were delivered the head was obviously the hardest part…the baby had to be resusitated. The shock was that no one was acting quickly or really seemed to know what they were doing when they were trying to get this baby oxygen. So after this happened we saw another sight that belonged in a horror movie. A woman came in after giving birth at home and needed some assistance. One of the nurses pulled us over and told the woman to pull up her skirt so we could see what happened. She had pushed too hard too early and her cervix literally fell out. Yes I know. It was extremely disturbing. So after all this, Cate delivered a baby that went really well and the mom seemed to beok and just got up and walked away until about 10 minutes later she came back almost bleeding to death. So she layed on the bed and waited for the doctor to come and examine her. The problem with this hospital is that there are not many doctors available and if they are there, they are most likely in surgery. So she literally had to wait there for like 15-20 minutes before anyone came to help her. No one was getting blood. No one was getting saline. Nothing. I was worried about this woman because she seemed to even be going in and out of consciousness but it didn’t seem to worry anyone else. So the doctor finally came and they realized that she had ruptured her uterus while giving birth because of a previous scar from a c-section. They then rushed and got the blood, rushed and got the saline which could have all been there about half an hour before hand!!!! It was crazy. They had to prop up the bed on top of a stool to prevent her from bleeding out and she had fainted at this point. They went to rush to prep the operating room for her to go into surgery to repair her uterus. It was such a scary, emotional roller coaster that could have been prevented if she had agreed to go for c-section in the first place. So we finally left the hospital and went home and had dinner with the family and spent time with the boys and we saw Reuben, our host father, ontv !! Reuben is a current member of the East African Parliament and he was having a meeting with the president of Kenya and he was literally sitting next to him ontv. It was crazy to see! The boys were like ‘Look! Babu is on tv!!!!’ It was adorable. Monday finally ended.

Tuesday was not as crazy but I did help prep a woman for c-section and I got to insert the catheter for surgery. It was pretty cool, but the size of the catheters they use are massive and the woman looked like she was in such pain! I also took care of many more newborns by injecting them and so on which I love doing. I also am addicted to holding the babies while we wait for their mothers to be ready to start breastfeeding or getting out of surgery.

Ok so Wednesday was the craziest day by far! So Cate and I went to the hospital kind of wanting a little break from maternity since it gets kind of crazy in there at times so we decided to go observe in the main theatre for the day and see what they were doing. We went and got changed and realized that it was the medical superintendent operating that day so we were excited to see him work. He is an ENT so he was performing a tonsilectomy first. We were watching him as he was brutally taking out a 5 year olds tonsils and Cate was standing right next to him observing. She moved away and went to go lean on the sink because she was starting to feel a little light headed…I was now right over the surgeons shoulder and was learning the anatomy of the mouth until I looked up and I didn’t see Cate anymore and I had heard a little noise. I didn’t really think anything of it other than she probably went to go sit down for a bit because standing for so long gets you tired. I wasn’t worried until I saw a nurse outside the operating room looking down at the ground and I immediately knew something happened so I walked out of the room and saw the nurses helping Cate up from the ground. She had fainted while walking out of the room to go sit down. When I saw her she had blood all down the front of her and I didn’t know where the blood was coming from, because I just thought she may have fallen in some on the ground. But as she took off her face mask which was bloody, I saw that she had busted her chin open! She looked as white as can be and so I gave money for someone to run to the cafeteria and get a bottled water. We had her sit down and I got a chance to really look at her chin, and it was small but really deep. She started to freak out because this is the last place you would want to be to have something like this happen to because the place isn’t that sanitary or sterile at a hospital in Africa but they took good care of her. One of the doctors had her lay down on a stretcher in the middle of the entrance to the operating room and she put about 10 stitches in her chin, the majority deep inside. She got bandaged up, which is huge, and we then had to go get her a tetanus shot and some antibiotics. It was absolutely crazy and scary but I am so glad that she is ok. Today I am changing the bandage for her and we are thinking about where we are going to get sterile equipment in the hospital because it is hard to find. The good thing though is that she got everything for free since we are working in the hospital. So we went for lunch and came back and went to maternity. We walked back and immediately one of the nurses wanted to show us this picture on her phone of something. She showed us and it was a picture of a set of still born twins. One having had hydrocephalis, which is where the head swells and is about twice the size of a normal head. The other twin looking pretty normal. I asked when did this happen??? and she said just about 40 minutes ago….WHAT?!?! I was so pissed that we missed it because if it was going to happen I wanted to at least be witness to it. So she then told us the whole story and a woman was referred from a rural dispensary out in the village and she came in with one leg hanging out already delivered. The dispensary told her that it was twins and that they could not hear the fetal heart rates so she came in somewhat prepared for the worst. They delivered the first twin which was breach and it came out with its head crushed…the next twin was cephalic, so head first but they noticed that it was huge so it had to have hydrocephalis. They were both still born. They think that the twin with the big head crushed the head of the other twin because the space is limited in the womb and it must have been wedged in between the head and the pelvic bone. The nurse said that the twins are just wrapped in a blanket in the back and asked us if we wanted to see them and of course we said yes…even though we were a little nervous. So we went back there and the one twin literally looked like an alien and the other you could tell had a big injury to the head. It was really shocking to see and I still can’t believe that I missed it!!!

Yesterday was nice and relaxing, which was a nice change. We went to go visit the nursery for a while which is their NICU and spent some time in the morning there. It was crazy to see the tiny tiny babies. One was abandoned at the hospital after birth and they realized later after a serology test that it was HIV positive. We were told that it is pretty common for women to come in and give birth and then just walk out and leave the baby there which is terrible. That baby has been there since April and is still receiving treatment. The nursery is crazy the way it is set up. They do not have working incubators so they just foot heaters instead. They have like 5 in the room so it feels like a sauna in there. They also have for their humidifier a pan of water on coals. The babies are then packed together in the broken incubators and one was even on a tray on the floor, this one weighed about 0.9kgs which is about 2 lbs. We then got a little bored and hot and went back to maternity for the day. I was asked to go to theatre at the end of the day and wait to receive the baby from c-section to bring back to the maternity ward. So I went and waited for the baby to be delivered and was walking back to the ward with the baby and was greeted by the grandmother half way there because she was coming to check up on her daughter. It was really exciting to show her her new grandson and she was almost in tears. She had her hand on my back and escorted me back to the ward to give the baby his injection. It was a big healthy baby boy.

So anyway we are on our way to the hospital for today and we are hoping for another exciting day without injuries!

I miss you all sooo much and I can’t wait to see you all!! Please email me any updates or just random entertaining stuff. I will see you all soon!!!

With all my love,

Ashley