Habari ya’ll? I want you to think back to the last time your power went out. It was probably stormy weather and if you went outside, you would see your trusty Com Edison/Georgia Power guys working tirelessly in their bright orange or yellow emergency vests to restore that power even in the roughest of conditions in a timely manner. Barring any natural disasters of a Katrina scale, the power would usually be restored in a timely manner. None of this applies here in Maseno. Starting at about 9am yesterday, we had no power during the entire day. So what happens when you need to do xrays, ultrasounds, or even charge your otoscope? The answer: nothing.
We were lucky enough to find a portable emergency generator to use for an emergency c-section, which I am quite glad I did not watch or assist on. I let Helen, our 4th year Chinese medical student from UC Davis, assist on it and she told me, “I will never do that again”. She described it to me in dramatic detail - the surgeon failing to ligate bleeding vessels and blood and body fluids sprayed everywhere. She asked me if it’s possible to get HIV through a blood splash to the eye. When I said “absolutely it’s possible”, she seemed unphased, but told me she may have got some blood shot in her face, but she wasn’t sure. While transmission is of a decreased probably versus sharing a needle, I was still very concerned. The HIV status of the patient was unknown, and we have the prophylaxis for needle sticks and exposures here. She asked me “well, is there any blood on my face?” and I reported “No…but did you wash your face afterwards?” and she said yes-ugh.
Yesterday I ended up admitting a 32 y/o gentleman who had had cough, fever, vomiting for a day. He was a heavy drinker of the local bathtub whiskey called Chungaa, which probably contains methanol because some folks have gone blind after drinking it. This guy was drinking about 600ml of this a day, which is close to a 1/5 of liquor back home, but stopped drinking the day prior and was noted by his friend to have a seizure that morning (he had bit his tongue). We had no ability to do an xray because of the lack of power, but I was concerned about aspiration pneumonia and delirium tremens. The patient wasn’t really responding very well. We have no ICU here and it’s an hour drive to the nearest hospital so we usually end up taking care of them. I started him on valium and antibiotics for pneumonia while we waited for power to come back on.
On my way back to the house where I am staying, I saw a hopeful sign - a single light bulb was powered on! I ran back and tried the power in the x-ray lab - it was on! I came back to the ward and said we could take the patients to xray and they were brought out. Unfortunately, my 32 y/o guy didn’t make it there, he was dead. His family crying at the bedside as I came by, he looked so peaceful. I really didn’t know what to do. I talked to David, the ENT nurse, about what I could have missed and he said you can’t stress these things and second guess yourself. If he had meningitis, we don’t have the facilities here to process spinal fluid, so I am not sure what we could have done differently. Still it was a bad way to end the day.
As I came back, we started to plug in our chargeable devices at the house, but no sooner did the power go out again. Unlike
BTW, I have a working cell phone! My number is 0714 831 451 I can receive calls and text messages for free, but it costs a fortune here to call the
It's amazing how dependent we are on technology. We are so blessed with so many things that we don't even need. When I lived in Florida, we had a pretty significant hurricane come through and we were without power for 7 days, had a curfew and couldn't really get all the things we were used to. But we had running water, even though it was cold, it was good to have. The conditions were no where near what you are experiencing. I came away from that not watching tv as much, doing more reading and crafting. It was a nice break from the hectic life I built around myself.
ReplyDeleteKeep on writing. It is fascinating to share just a little in your adventure. Robin