I cannot believe that I have now been here for 4 weeks, that's nearly half way! Part of me is looking forward to going home to see all my friends and family and enjoy the few luxuries that I really miss like toilet paper that tears on a line (simple things, eh), most other things like cold showers and rice and beans everyday has just become the norm.The other half of me never wants to leave this amazing, beautiful country with such friendly, happy people - I love the smiles I get walking down the street and the extreme over excitement of little kids when you so much as wave at them. If all the people I miss could be here, it would be the most perfect place ever!
Last Friday i taught my last computer lesson because I gave up :P I think of myself as fairly resourceful but teaching computer with no computer to students who had no knowledge of them proved too difficult so I am just sticking to joining them for games lessons. So this evening I joined them in playing netball which was exhausting and horribly sweaty, but very fun and definitely an experience because they just have a bit of field with posts at either end, no lines, no bibs and pretty much no rules.
The weekend was lovely and relaxing, spending all of Saturday lying by the pool in the 35 degree sunshine - I may have got a little sun burned (I blame the antimalarials)
On sunday, Sofia and I spent the afternoon making loom bands with the kids from the mustard seed orphanage, which of course they loved, and then wandered home stopping off to buy various, ridiculously cheap groceries, including cheese which was definitely the highlight of the week.
Monday was a pretty hectic and draining day at Azur clinic. We were pleased to see that some, if not many, observations had been done whilst we had been away over the weekend. We had to take one woman for a c-section because she had been 5cm dilated (10cm is fully) for over 20 hours so that baby needed to come out. When they delivered him, he was a big 4kg babe but all was well with both mum and baby :)
Back on labour ward there was a woman who had been fully dilated for a long time and had an extremely large bump so it was query twins or big baby! After a while we decided to use vacuum extraction where you suction a vacuum onto the babies head to help pull it out. It was a hand pumped vacuum so I got the pleasure of pumping it up to increase the suction which was exhausting! It took about 10 tries before we eventually got the head out and then we had the problem of a shoulder dystocia (where the shoulders are too wide to fit through the pelvis). By this point the baby had been in distress for a long time so we were pretty convinced it wouldn't be alive upon delivery. Sofia managed to deliver one of the arms so that there was then more room for the shoulders to squeeze out and thank God the baby came out screaming and only a little blue at an enormous 4.35kg so no wonder he didn't want to come out!
The rest of this week has obviously not been a chosen one for having babies as the clinic has been generally very quiet.
Yesterday I attended and assisted in an obstetric emergencies training day for local staff run by Charlie with a load of other white doctors and nurses from UK that are living in various parts of Uganda. In the morning I learned a lot from their lectures and in the afternoon I got the honour of acting as a severely bleeding woman in scenarios so got to pretend to have cannulas and catheters stuck in me by the assorted doctors, nurses and midwives that attended - it was very hard to keep a straight face.
I am extremely excited because tomorrow I am going rhino trekking in a rhino sanctuary with the previously mentioned medics - can't wait :D
I still find it impossible to believe that I am actually - some night I lie in bed and I'm like 'wow I'm actually lying here, in uganda, in Africa, doing what I've wanted to do for about the last 4 years' - its mind blowing!
Missing y'all and lotsa love xxxx
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