I'm here! I arrived exhausted but well on Monday evening with both of my bags! I can honestly say I really do enjoy the transportation part of traveling. I sat next to wonderful people on the plane...on my last flight I sat next to a nurse who was on her way to Tanzania to do a clinic there...so we had LOTS to talk about. It was raining when I arrived in Nairobi, and it was a 2-hour drive to Limuru, where the volunteer house is located. Let me just say Nairobi traffic is absolutely insane. I am not sure if I will ever be able to completely get use to that! But praise God we made it...there were definitely a few close calls!
I won't bore you with too many logistical details, but I began volunteering Tuesday. After discussing with the project managers, it was decided the best fit for me was going to be at Kikuyu Hospital. So slightly different than what I was anticipating, but I trusted their judgement and was just excited to be able to start so soon. I got to meet with the Matron of the hospital, which is essentially the Director of Kenya. She was extremely helpful and wonderful to talk to. (I even found out how I can become a nurse in Kenya after getting my license in the U.S.!)
I was taken to the male ward (they split their wards male and female), and I was given a quick tour. Now this hospital is fairly large and has a lot of resources (at least for those able to pay). All of the different departments are in separate one story buildings, so when you need to transfer a patient to a different area you simply just wheel the bed outside on the sidewalk and take them somewhere else! I have just been like a sponge taking everything in. I know anything I attempt to write at the moment will not come even close to the real experience, but I will try a paint somewhat of a picture.
There are 34 beds in the male ward...4 beds to a room. 2 of the beds are private. Aside from the private rooms, there are no bathrooms in the rooms. There are about 3-4 licensed nurses and 4-5 nursing students who do everything. Some of them were just in their second year of schooling, but they were very much competent at the tasks they were doing. The patients do not have call lights, so they basically just lay in bed until someone comes to them. I was amazed that I did not hear patients calling out, nor have I ever heard a patient ask for pain medication.
In terms of supplies and resources, they really just try and do the best with what they have. I was pleasantly surprised to find they had a good supply of gloves and seemed to use them at the appropriate times. On the other hand, today they had no clean bed sheets, so as we made the beds, we simply shook off the sheet on their bed and put it right back on. They also have no towels, so when we were giving a patient a bed bath, I just had to use a hospital gown to dry him off. They do have the ability to take xrays, ultrasounds, and CT scans. They have a small laboratory and send out anything they cannot do themselves.
One of the things that has really impacted me is some of the diagnoses of the patients on the floor. One man I helped to bathe today suffers from polio. The nurse asked me if I care for many polio patients, and I just shook my head...thinking to myself how polio has almost been eradicated around the world, thanks to vaccination. Another man has TB and HIV. Now in the States we probably would place this patient in an isolation room and be extra cautious in everything we did. But here....he was just in a room with other patients and the only different as care providers was that we wore masks along with our gloves when caring for him. He has an awful septic wound on his abdomen and it is so deep you can see his organs. I got to assist with changing the dressing. It was sad to me that they didn't have the nice sterile stuff with silver and other minerals that aid in wound healing. They just had some gauze pads and then we wrapped a roller bandage around that. I was also informed that he always needed a sputum cup near his bedside. I noted his teeth were an orange-ish color, which I remembered is a side-effect of a common TB medication. It almost doesn't seem real caring for patients with diseases that up until now, I really have only read about.
Thank you for all of your prayers. I am doing well and so happy to be here.
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