12:44 PM 12/6/2011
11pm. Muranga.
woke up at 5am to people snoring. oh the joy of sharing a room.
the cook made "meat pies" (they resemble empanadas) sausages, sweet potato, taro, and veggies.
By the time we got to St. Peter's Church, the tent was filled with people patiently waiting.
Someone amongst the crowd had fainted and all of the volunteers rushed to him...we carried onto a table. The patient was an 80 year old man, most likely dehydrated, hypertensive, blood sugar 97. Patient was resucitated with almost one liter of bottled water mixed with oral dehydration mix. Basically, the man drank normal saline. That was the height of the chaos.
I would look up at the crowd once in a while and try to not to get overwhelmed by the swarm of people. The weather wasn't too bad, but it actually got hot.
Sometimes we're so used to having things in a certain order. at certain times the flow seemed systematic. Each patient registered at a desk and was given an assessment sheet with a number on it. It was amazing to see the crowd sitting patiently waiting for one minute and then all of a sudden flip out....as a whole they became so anxious and determined to move forward in line- it was like musical chairs. Once a patient left the vitals area to proceed to triage, someone would appear in front of me within seconds.
The work day was long. We had a break for lunch. Luckily I'm semi-used to holding my pee for hours on end. It was a repetative task- blood pressure, temp, pulse, blood sugar, "please wait over there". The numbers got all out of order, i was serving 135, then 240. At times I felt rushed because everyone seemed to be impatient. It honestly took a moment for me to "zen" myself....to remember that things dont have to be perfect. we're going to get the job done no matter what.
deep breath, deep breath.....and don't forget to smile.
The majority of the people could not speak or understand english, so much of the communication was conquered through body language.
Who would've thought having someone place a temperature probe under their tongue could be such a challenge. A lot of people were scared of us poking their fingers to check their blood sugar (assessing for diabetes).
At the same time, I was surprised when someone could understand me. Any english word was a sense of comfort.
lunch time couldn't be more of a relief. We went back to milli's house in rounds.
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the flip side to doing serving those in need is the working with the native people here who know how to take advantage of you.
although, i'm sure that their partially here for the cause...some of the workers are here to get over somehow. some things were taken, and some people would keep asking for things....personal items.
not only did we have to manage the flow of the clinic, but we had to keep one eye on our personal belongings at all times. i feel almost 'wrong' for even thinking like that, but how can you be too careful. at any given moment temptation can overpower someone's righteousness.
sad but true.
on a positive note, we saw more than 300 people.
what baffled me was the amount of clothes that these people were wearing. men and women wore a thick blazer with a long sleeve blouse underneath. and their head wrapped.
during the peak of the sun's heat a good amount of people had a low grade fever. it was difficult to decipher whether or not the patient had an underlying issue or if the patient was tachycardic from dehydration .
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