Off to the A&E to sort records. I was a little bummed to miss rounds this morning, especially since we actually had two new admissions – it was Team B’s admitting day, but if a patient comes in who’s been admitted to a different team before, they’re readmitted to the same team. Quasi-continuity of care.
I forgot to take pictures of the A&E records when I first started, but as I think I’ve mentioned before, they’re a disaster. I volunteered to reorganize them so I wouldn’t have a coronary every time I walk in there, especially since I’m missing a third of April. Supposedly all the charts from a given month and year are in one box, but as soon as you start digging through them you realize that they’re all mixed. They’re also extremely dusty, and half of them are torn, folded, crumpled, curled, moldy, and/or have unidentified stains on them. For whatever reason I chose to wear a white blouse and white jacket this morning, knowing that I was going to be working with the charts. Needless to say, this was revealed very early on to be a bad decision.
The area that I was working in was an open reception-type desk, which is usually empty, next to the A&E waiting room and triage room. Unfortunately, the first thing the patients think when they see me standing there sorting papers is that I’m either a doctor or receptionist – either way, every 5 minutes people kept coming up to me and asking for help. I could only lamely reply, “I don’t work here,” and explain in a mixture of Setswana and English to go talk to the nurse. The nurses, meanwhile, looked at me like I was a crazy person. Especially since one of the areas where the files are stored is the triage room, so I would skulk outside the door when they were with patients, then shoot in to grab as many boxes as I could before they brought another patient in. I was pretty pleased with my progress by lunchtime, because I had already found one of the missing April days!
I broke for lunch with Dr. Kung, Tiny, and Dr. Joseph (our new medical officer from the DRC), because Dr. Kung was treating all of us since it was Tiny’s last day in paeds. Apparently she’s actually only a first-year resident (a fact which shot her even higher in my esteem when I found out), and she’s taking vacation next week before moving to radiology. We went to Fresh Café, another very expat-heavy locale, but with delicious food. I got a salad (the first in a while – Botswana is not a very agriculturally inclined country) with chickpeas, chicken, and feta, and freshly squeezed mango juice. YUM. Lunch was nice, although Dr. Kung spent a lot of it in conversation with Tiny, which left me to make some very awkward conversation with Dr. Joseph. Like Chengi, he concluded that I’m a godless heathen, and was appalled to hear that (to my knowledge, anyway) I’m not baptized. Oh well, can’t please everyone.
Back to work on the files after lunch – it went by quickly, and before I knew it it was already dark. I headed home, and Lina and I had a combi adventure to get to Riverwalk to join Olivia and Julia for dinner (they had gone ahead to get groceries). Our directions went a little like this: “Take the Broadhurst 5 to the T-junction. Then take any combi until you see Riverwalk.” Great, except what’s a T-junction? And which way is it?
Two combis and 6 pula later, we made it to Riverwalk, and had a DELICIOUS Ethiopian meal with real cappuccinos. We ate til we were stuffed full of the best quality meat we’ve had since we’ve been in Botswana (I would have taken a picture but I left my camera at home), then had coffee cake for dessert. We felt disgustingly full but happy afterwards, and we managed a 20 pula cab ride back to UB. Score!
Packing for Serowe and sleep.
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