Apathy and Indifference

Today...hmm...was, as Gary put it, a very sobering day. We were supposed to tour Dora Mzynga Public Hospital, but it turns out that they actually wanted it to be like clinical. So they split us up into 2 groups: 8 went to the burn unit while the other 8 went to the maternity unit. Me, Chelsea, and Megan ended up in the male burn unit. It was hard to watch the indifference and lack of empathy the nurses displayed for their patients. They treated them like objects that needed fixing instead of people who needed healing. The doctor and swarm of med students and the nurses left 2 patients shivering uncontrollably after examining them. As they struggled to put on their robes, I took the initiative and put their robes on and made sure they were comfortable. The 3 of us were almost in tears over this horrible care. Later, when more of us toured the male burn unit, the 13-year-old boy getting washed and debrieded was crying and yelling in pain, and what did the nurses do? Yelled at him to be quiet and straighten his legs (which looked painful). All of us had our jaws on the ground...it was so sad. Chelsea got overheated and overwhelmed and had to go sit down, which is totally understandable. We gratefully ate lunch and then headed to labour and delivery while the others went to peds.

The nurse there ignored us and then treated us with disdain, assuming that we knew nothing about OB and judging us for this assumption. After waiting around for a half an hour and hanging out with 2 residents there doing their residency program, we were told a woman was at 10 cm and ready to push. So we watched a birth!!! It was amazing!! The baby spent about 10 seconds with mom before being ushered off to get cleaned up, weighed, etc...and then just left him on a table. When we left 20 minutes later, he still wasn't with mom and she was still laying there...in her bodily fluids...they hadn't cleaned her up! It was appalling! Debbie quick showed us the pre-mees in the NICU and we got out of there! I came back and showered before post-conference w/Gary and Kim. We all vented about the day and then went to Leonardo's for pizza. I'm back now and ready to go to bed...whew.

Bridges, Screaming, and Elephants

Today was the adrenaline junky day of our entire trip, no question. After breakfast, we headed over to the Bloukran's Bridge to bungie jump. 14/16 of us girls did it while me and Kellyn cheered on the sidelines. We had a good view of the bridge and the jumpers using binoculars. Eventually we moved into the bar and ordered coffee, watching both the live video feed close up and running over to the ledge to see the big picture of the entire bridge and the jumper. Some people were crying, others quietly panicking, some jumping around to the music...it was a variety (they play loud, pump-it-up music on the bridge to psych people up). After that, me, Kellyn, Gary and Kim drove with Jenni and Kayla so they could sky-dive. That was cool to see because they were these little, screaming dots in the sky and they fell for about 30 seconds before they pulled the parachute. We ate lunch and shopped in a little town before heading off to the elephant sanctuary to hang out with the elephants! We got to walk around with them, touch them, and me and Kellyn RODE them! It was crazy! Last, we drove back and I'm helping Sara put pics of her bungie stuff on Facebook.

Zipping and Zagging

Today is our first day in Tsitsikamma! We got up and went to our canopy zip-line tour, and it was super fun! There were lots of lines of various speeds, and sometimes we didn't even need to brake due to the incline of the line. We think the guides were really good...but that the guy clipping us in might have been tipsy...but no accidents occurred, so it's all good. We devoured our lunches and headed to Tsitsikamma National Park to climb on the rocks, admire the ocean, and hike to the suspension bridge. The waves were HUGE and the water was a beautiful blue-green in the sun. The hike was short and really pretty, and walking across the suspension bridge was fun because jumping on it causes it to shake and messes up the people who are attempting to walk on it. Some people wanted to climb up this steep ravine, but it was gonna get dark soon so we just walked back. The winds were picking up and a storm was rolling in, which made the waves even BIGGER and turned the water to a grey-blue color. We high-tailed it out of there and are not at our hotel. I'm in one of the two 6-person indoor flats, and there's 4 people in 2 permanent tents outside.

Preggers...prevention.

Today I went to the Walmer Clinic for our last day of clinical. We waited around and took a tour, which brought us to 10:00 AM. For the next hour or so I spent time in Family Planning. Basically what the nurse does is specialize in birth control, pap smears, STI's, HIV/AIDS prevention, and planning for pregnancy. The nurse was fun and interesting, and she allowed us to give birth control injections! After clinical, we ate lunch and had a post-conference in Gary and Kim's room. We talked about vulnerable populations here, and the talk shifted to what we're going to do this weekend in Tsitsikamma. 14/16 of us are bungie jumping, 9 or us are riding elephants, and 2 are sky-diving. I'm just doing the elephant riding...bungie jumping isn't really my thing and I can sky-dive anywhere in the world and have it be awesome. We chilled in the afternoon and had a braai for dinner! Then we chilled and now off to bed!

Providing Comfort and Help

Today was pretty long in terms of clinical stuff. I was doing hospice stuff today. What that involves is riding around with a hospice nurse to various homes and visiting them. It was part social call and part health interview and physical. There was a wide range of the health of the patients; some were looking so healthy that you would never know they had a terminal illness, while others were on their death beds and not expected to make it another day. My nurse and I were primarily in the middle-class areas, but some of the other girls got to spend some time in the townships, which I am kind of jealous about. We got done around 4 and ate dinner, and some people went bar hopping while us tired people tried to go to bed early. Problem was that people were loudly partying all over the building because the study abroad people are leaving this weekend. So I fell asleep around 12 or so...now I'm tired and trying to motivate myself for the day.

Mommas and Migraines

Today we spent our morning at New Brighton Clinic. I started off with Kayla and Sara in the "treatment room", where general things like vitals, weight and height, and smaller things are taken care of. We saw a nurse take out stitches and staples, and I highly suspect the man was involved in a fight including a gunshot wound to the stomach and a fistfight due to the location and type of injuries he had. We then were relocated to the antenatal area because they were open. See, the OB nurse was sick, so they didn't have another OB nurse to take over and work that area, so they had closed that section of the clinic. Last minute a nurse from pediatrics came to work with the patients, with 2 nursing students from Port Elizabeth University in tow. There were originally two patients, but it turns out that one of them wasn't even pregnant! She had done something funky with her birth control, which made her think she was 5 months pregnant. The routine urine test came back negative, and it was obvious she wasn't 5 months pregnant because her stomach was completely flat. So she left, and we shifted our focus to the other patient in the room who was actually pregnant! Since it was her first time there, they did an extensive exam. First they checked blood stuff, like hemoglobin and HIV testing. The HIV test is terrifying because, although it only takes 15 minutes to give results, it's occurring on a small card right on the table. The nurse had the sense to cover it up with something so the patient wasn't staring at the card for 15 minutes, but she still was distracted by it while the nurse was trying to take her medical history. Finally they showed her the results, and there was a tense moment where all of us were praying it was negative...and it was! It's one less baby who will have HIV and, at least for now, one less young person. Then they did the head-to-toe complete physical. They use a measuring tape from the top to the bottom of the stomach and this wheel paper thing to determine how many weeks along she was, and she was about 28-30 weeks. As what I learned in class came back to me, it got me excited about OB again.

We got back from there and, because it was rainy, people wanted to go shopping. Unfortunately a migraine got in my way enough to keep me in bed. Sadly shopping didn't work out for them due to transportation issues. We ate out at an amazing seafood restaurant, and Gary chipped in 80 rand each from the "kitty", which contains all the extra money we spent on the main fee of the trip. I tried this cajun kingclip fish thing, and it was amazing! Then we just came back, and I called some people and now off to bed!

Scamming

Today was kinda boring. We left around 8:15 for St. Francis Hospice, who we will be doing home visits with. We had to sit for 3.5 hours listening to them talk about their facility and what they do. Most of us checked out after the first hour, but they couldn't tell. See, you can be looking straight at someone or at some display and look like you're paying attention when you're actually busy thinking about what you want to do in the afternoon. So after we were done, we came back and lounged for the day. I read tons of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (great book!) and relaxed. When I took a shower that night before dinner, the hot water just wasn't there so I took an ice cold shower...lovely. We ate at Primi's again, and Ana and Kayla flirted with the waiters enough to get us all shooters for only $1 each. The bill was messed up so it took awhile to figure it out, which is really annoying because it really can't be that hard to print a receipt and have it be correct. After we got back, we were all set to listen to one of the CDs we bought at that Pub in New Brighton. Sadly the artists scammed us and gave us blanks! Frustrated, I went to my room and typed up my Journal #2 for class and went to sleep!