An early day, because I wanted to go to morning report with Dr. Kung. First time walking to work on my own, since Kat didn’t need to be up as early as me. I made it to the hospital, but got a little lost trying to find the conference room.
Report was super-interesting, again, but one of the patient’s situations was really sad. A baby with hydrocephalus (basically a condition where an excess amount of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) builds up in the brain) had a shunt placed to drain the fluid off her brain into her abdomen the day before, but in the early evening, the resident responsible for the NNU (like the NICU) noticed that blood and CSF were leaking from the incision site, which is apparently not normal. She tried calling in the neurosurgeon who had performed the operation, but the surgeon said that she was too tired and told the resident to call the on-call pediatrician. All of the attendings were very upset and declared the attending’s behavior unprofessional. It was an interesting interaction to observe, but the worst part was that the baby had ended up deteriorating overnight and was placed on a ventilator. I can see both sides of the argument, because the neurosurgeon is the only one at PMH, so at a certain point you have to make hard decisions about allocating your time without getting burned out. At the same time, that’s someone’s child you’re responsible for, and, as the attendings put it, you shouldn’t take a patient in to surgery (“the theatre,” as they call it here) if you can’t follow up on the potential complications.
Dr. Kung stayed after for a meeting, so I went back to the pedes ward and ended up chatting with one of the interns. He went to medical school in Jamaica, and it was really interesting to hear about how the residency process works here. Basically, you do all four years of medical school, then become an intern for a year, followed by a year of work as a medical officer, then apply for residencies.
Dr. Kung came back and tried to show me how the computer system works here – apparently I misunderstood, and there are two computers for the pediatric ward, not for the whole hospital – but it has to connect to a remote server, which was down. I went back to my little office to do more work, and found two nurses taking a snack break. One of them left as soon as I came in (I guess she was shy, or maybe I smell), but the other one stayed and chatted with me for some time. I may have made a friend, yay!
My little friend from yesterday came back, this time with his own little friend. I let them color with my highlighters, which they seemed to enjoy. Then the little boy found a box in the corner with stuffed animals and a giant, unopened box of 120 crayons. Before I could do anything he ran off with them, and when I caught up he was showing them to his grandmother and she was telling him to “thank Aunty” for the gift. Awkward. I had to explain to her that they weren’t mine, so I couldn’t give them to him, but that I would bring him more tomorrow. I felt like such a horrible person. It only occurred to me later that I could have just replaced the box in the office. UGH, FML.
Lunch again at Pie City, which went much more smoothly than yesterday. Kat and I even got to our training 15 minutes early, and had to sit out on a curb waiting to be let in. In the meantime, we observed the Botswana version of the ice cream truck – a guy riding around on a bike, honking an exceptionally obnoxious little horn.
Got home late from the training, also feeling a little irritated because Dr. Kung told me that the IRB was taking too long to get back to us, so she is going to have to switch me onto Kat’s project for the time being. I had been feeling fairly neutral towards the strike thus far, but now I want it to end. Apparently the government offered a 5% increase, which they refused. Grrr.
Went to dinner at Embassy, a REALLY PHENOMENALLY TASTY YUMMY GOOD Indian restaurant at Riverwalk. Stuffed our faces. Was so, so happy. It actually turned into a really stressful experience, though, because there were 9 of us, and some of us were trying to pay by card while others were using cash. Paying the bill always takes a long time, but we were even more stressed than usual because we were trying to make an 8:15 movie. Julia and Becca went ahead to make sure there would still be seats available, but then the waitress came back twice because she was confused about how much to put on the cards, and then she told us that we didn’t have enough cash. She got really frustrated with us in the end, and muttered something about not getting a tip, which made us all feel alternately embarrassed and annoyed. As a side-note that may help you understand our feeling of disgruntle-ment (yeah, I know that’s not a word): they generally don’t give tips here. Only Westerners do, and usually not even then. But the entire clientele of this restaurant appeared to be ex-pats, so I think we may have misunderstood the conventions. Still, I had been planning to leave the waitress a tip, because it’s stressful serving our group, but after that I was feeling far less generous. Also, we were late to the movie.
Next, although we had thought the movie ticket was only 25 Pula, it turned out to be 40. We were flustered, and Julia and Becca were already inside, so we were even more flustered, but we had to go ahead and pay. The movie theaters here work like an actual theater, in that you have assigned seats that you select when you buy your ticket. We went through the ticket check together, but then we got separated by a crowd. Olivia and Kat went to the bathroom, which I didn’t notice until I went into the theater and almost talked to some people sitting in what I thought were our seats. I was super confused, so I just sat down randomly. The movie had already started, so the darkness added to my confusion. By the time the other two came in, two people had sat down on the other side of me, so we were separated. Just when I finally thought everything was settled, a guy and his girlfriend came in, and told me that I was in their seat. Feeling slightly panicked, I indicated that the people next to me were in my seat, to which the guy responded, “Tell him to move.” Not wanting to confront a total stranger who happened to be twice my size, I must have made the universally recognized “deer in the headlights” face, because the guy went and got an usher to sort it out. The couple next to me ended up being forced to move, and I sat down next to Olivia, feeling like the last thing in the world I wanted to do was watch the movie.
Thankfully, the movie (Pirates of the Carribean!) ended up being pretty entertaining, if bizarre in parts (one word for you: mermaids). Entertaining wait for the cab afterwards, although, in spite of calling for a cab specifically to avoid dealing with the sketchy Riverwalk cabs, we ended up squeezing five people into the backseat of a very, very sketch “Hello cab.” We checked our list of the official cabs when we got home, and they definitely weren’t on it. Whatever, 20 Pula for 5 people and we got a good story out of it.
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