Rough week

We lost two more patients this week. On Friday we transferred an 18 month old boy who had a large neck abscess and sepsis. We heard he was getting transfusions on Saturday. But received word that he died on Sunday night. On Monday morning we saw an elderly woman who had stopped eating and had been choking. She had a bad cough and could no longer walk. We started antibiotics and sent her straight to the main hospital on our side of the river. We heard this morning that she'd died. 

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This morning as i walked downhill to the clinic i was looking at my phone, stepped on a loose rock and rolled my ankle. Ouch! After Teresa & i prayed at the start of our day, i wrapped it with an Ace. Later, i took two naproxen and kept working. Thankfully, most of this job can be done from a chair. And I did follow my own "ortho girl" orders and elevate my foot on breaks between patients. It is the same ankle i sprained in first grade at my grandparents' house and also the same foot i broke on the first Saturday at Wheaton College. 

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It wasn't really a busy day but for some reason it was stressful in the clinic today. Tension ran high as a few staff members were in a hurry to get home for other business and tempers were short. Maybe it was the suffocating heat... We did have some really interesting cases that needed careful attention and presented great educational opportunities for the nurses such as an adorable toddler i suspect has kwashiorkor (protein deficiency). I just wish these cases wouldn't all present at the same time! 

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This evening after i'd had an hour's rest with my foot elevated and a fun FaceTime chat with the world's cutest niece, Teresa asked me to help her light the butane gas-powered fridge at the office. I left the house for "just a second" but soon was sucked into the world of Quick Books' End of Quarter Memorized Reports... But i was really floundering as my phone went dead and that is where i'd kept my notes. 

As we talked about how humid it was & how nice it'd be to take a shower later, a nagging voice inside my head told me to go home--as if i'd forgotten something. Even when the guard came by to ask to go home "before the rain came" i didn't put two and two together. It wasn't until the rain started that it finally hit me: i still had sheets & towels on the line!! And of course, neither Teresa nor i had a flashlight or an umbrella with us!!

We felt our way across the lot in the dark, trying not to step on the stupid cat cowering under my skirt, while the random big drops of an impending deluge pelted us. As soon as we were inside i grabbed a flashlight and we scrambled around the yard in the dirt-turning-to-mud! Soggy now, we hung up the also-soggy laundry in the spare bedroom, laughing at the improbability of all this after a week of nothing but heat lightning "shows" in the distance. She cleaned up our muddy tracks in the kitchen and I decided it was time to try the chocolate ice cream i'd made yesterday (from an instant packet of powder!). I went to the sink to wash my hands--nothing. No water. Not a drop. Our tank ran out again!! Oh, the irony, as the rain beat down on the tin roof... 

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Teresa went to her house to take a rain "shower" and then to lock up the office. The night guard came to the office door to let her know that a woman in labor had shown up at the gate, needing transport to the hospital. But the traditional birth assistant, who should accompany her patient, was too sick to go. So now in the middle of a thunder storm Teresa had to call a nurse and the ambulance driver--with the rain so loud on the roofs that neither the caller nor the recipients could really hear each other!! 

Teresa felt bad that the ambulance driver would have to "swim" over from his house so she decided to go pick him up in the ambulance. When she turned onto the narrow dirt road to his house, she drove right into a rushing river of run off--and got the ambulance stuck in the mud! Even in 4 wheel drive, neither of them could get it out so they "swam" back to the compound and up to the office to get the keys to the pick up truck. Thankfully, it started without a problem and the laboring lady was able to climb up into it. So he is finally on his way to pick up the accompanying nurse who didn't want to swim over here!

This is a night for the books--er, um--the blog!!

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PS: As i type this I've collected three buckets of rain water for my "shower" tonight!