Heavy hearted
Not sure which is harder, knowing how sick the patient is or not knowing how truly ill she is.
We lost a little boy last Thursday. He was in dire straights when we sent him up the road to our area hospital but he succumbed later to some feverish illness that low blood sugar and seizures. He was known to have some underlying condition and had terrible gum & mouth sores, and had been in and out of the hospital for the past few months. He was 3 years old but had serious malabsorption as only weighed half of what he should. Even as we worked on him we had that heavy feeling that he was just too sick to save.
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Tuesday i saw a middle aged woman with painful abdominal swelling. This fluid collection could be from any number of conditions, none of which we can test for or treat in our clinic. I sent her to the hospital with some donated medicines to ease the discomfort but i was left with many nagging questions: should i have done that? Would it have helped her if i'd prescribed this? Could i have done more?
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As a house keeper told me, "Africa is hard."

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