Congratulations - Pongezi
Thank you - Asante
And when talking with close friends, say "Sasa" and "Poa" instead of "Habari" and "Mzuri".
One thing I have really enjoyed here is how amazingly nice and supportive the staff is here at the hospital, both the long-term missionaries and Kenya natives. We have quickly made friends with the interns and nurses in the OB/GYN department and we all equally love sharing and learning about each other cultures. In return for them teaching us some Swahili, Emily thought we should teach them some English slang since they already know proper English (they start learning it in Kindergarten here). So she taught them 'talkin' smack', 'peace out', and 'fo shizzle' which we both admitted to them we don't ever use but it was quite fun to here them using 'fo shizzle' in our conversations.
So the past two days have been very fun and we are learning a ton at the maternity ward and MCH clinic. Emily and I spent part of yesterday morning being shown around by one of the nursing students and having him describe everything in the delivery room since we hope to be participating in some deliveries. A couple interesting things about the delivery room here: it is one giant room with two curtains separating it into three separate "coaches" as they call them (beds basically), it used for vaginal deliveries only, and the nursing students and nurses are the ones who deliver these babies. There are no doctors around unless there is a problem and the way they described that to us is 'if a doctor is in the delivery, you know it's bad'. They have only one 'theatre' room, otherwise known as a surgical room, where they do the c-sections and all other ob and some gyn surgeries.
One coach room
We then spent three hours in rounds on the 46 women currently in the maternity ward. Talk about a backache! Luckily our afternoon included watching a vaginal delivery, my very first one! I was excited...and nervous lol. I have only passed out once in my life watching a doc suturing a lesion removal on a face back when I was 19, but people who know the story don't let me live it down. So I was trying to make sure I didn't lock my knees and that I moved around a little bit. I have to say I have toughened up a little bit because I didn't once feel sick, but I did kinda gasp when the baby came out because it was covered in so much gunk as I like to call it (proper medical term, I know!) that I thought it was hypoxic and not doing well as well as there was a lot of blood pouring out of the mom due to a tear that occurred during the delivery. The baby was suctioned and started crying and the mom was sutured up so all was well! Truly awesome....and disgusting, but I can't wait to learn how to deliver one myself!
One of the small maternity floor rooms with just 6 beds
Some of the other rooms have 12-14 beds
There can be 2 patients to a bed
Watching the birth gave me and Emily the itch to go see the babies in the nursery. The nursery here is like a NICU back home. If the baby is well, it stays with the mom in her bed until they are released. If something is wrong with the baby, then it goes to the nursery and mom is typically not discharged until the baby is discharged. There were 30 babies in the nursery yesterday and around 10 on the floor with the moms. Another interesting thing down here is that the babies don't wear diapers. So in the nursery, most of the babies are laying on a blanket, not wrapped up, without anything covering what's between the legs and pee can shoot out at anytime! Laura, one of the visiting doctors, told me she was walking through the nursery yesterday when she had to jump back to keep from getting wet from a baby. Gee, I can't wait for that next month!
Just a small part of the Nursery
(picture stolen from Emily because I haven't been able to take my camera up to the hospital yet)
After work, we ran into some local Kenyan children playing and joined them. We brought them pens, paper, and crayons and spent around 1 1/2 hours with them just sitting on the dirt-covered sidewalk having a wonderful time! They were coloring us pictures and writing out the names of what they had drawn...in English! By the way, Kenyans LOVE pens - especially our click-pens!
Showing off their pens to one another!
Last night we finished up our day with weekly Bible study. The men have a Bible study group at one house while the women go to another house. It was a great study on the Psalms and learning about generous grace and generous giving. One amazing thing about being here is the complete openness with which everyone expresses their belief in God. We all eat together and we pray. The staff has morning meeting and we pray. A family loses a loved one and we pray. It's so comforting to know all of these people are here for the same reason and that's to do what God has laid out for them and to do it in His name. The patients are also very receptive to it which means even more because they are the ones that need the prayers the most.
Today was just as fun and more exciting than yesterday, moreso for Emily than myself. We have decided to split up and one of us cover the clinic with an intern while the other stays on the ward so that we both get equal opportunities and we don't crowd the areas. There are lots of Kenyan interns and students that have to be taught and they are a priority over us because they are being trained to serve here in their home area. We are here to learn for school as well, but ours is more about the experience of just being here. Luckily the interns and students are WONDERFUL teachers as well as the doctors! Emily got to watch two D&Cs before performing one herself, assist in a hysterectomy, do a few OB exams, and watch triplets be born ALL vaginally! As for me? I rounded for two hours and then spent my afternoon in the clinic. We had to do a couple OB exams on patients who were having some bleeding. One of them had miscarried already at 12 weeks and the other was pregnant with twins at 18 weeks, but she didn't believe she was pregnant (even though her belly measured 24 cm). The one with twins was at risk for a threatened abortion due to passing clots which we found when we examined her. Both were admitted to the ward. The best part of that was the one who had miscarried already was seen by the chaplain to discuss the loss and she ended up giving her life to Christ! Great things come from tragedy! In the middle of all that, a women who was resting after her visit ended up having her water break there in the room. We checked her and the first of three babies was already descending head first through the canal so she was rushed over to the hospital delivery room where no ORs where open. They ended up delivering all three babies vaginally with the last two being breech (yes, this was the one Emily got to watch). Amazing day! Can't wait for tomorrow and then a wonderful weekend of rest!
God Bless and good night from Kenya!
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