The days are blurring together!

March 9th:
Copang ‘o! (“hello” in Luo)
Today we drove an hour and a half outside of Masindi towards northern Uganda to do the first of two days at a church located near several refugee camps. My translator told me that there are over 57 languages spoken in a 10 mile radius of the clinic site. The main language of Masindi, where Rachel and I will be living, is Runyoro. A bit farther north, most people speak Luo. Swahili seems to be a common thread through all the languages I have heard. Many phrases in Luo and Runyoro retain at least one word from the Swahili phrase of the same meaning. Today, I had the opportunity to work with Amber, a PA, who was a great teacher. We saw several interesting cases and I got to do my first pelvic exam. We diagnosed a man with absence seizures, treated a small boy who had had seizures since birth, treated parasites, ear infections, STD’s, pneumonia, and tons of other things. Of course one of my main goals on this trip was to get a grasp of the local languages so that I can spend this summer learning them. Today was very exciting as I started being able to understand a lot of what our translator said when the patient spoke either Runyoro, Luo, or Swahili. I still blurt out Spanish when I don’t stop to think first. (Rachel here to finish) Mandie has astounded everyone with her language learning ability. I’m quite confident she’ll be starting on her third local language when I’ll still be struggling with the first. I’m glad I’ll be living with someone who understands the people here.

As exciting as Mandie’s day was, my day was predictable. I spent the day in triage again and I perfected the art of taking blood pressures quickly. Each of us in triage had a Ugandan nursing student with us. They are only four weeks into the program and did not know the normal heart rate or blood pressure, so I spent as much time teaching my nursing student as I did talking to the patient. It reminded me of the first week of nursing school and how overwhelming it was to try and absorb everything being taught. I’m glad I survived and can now teach someone else.

Most of the time I still feel like a student, but it has started to set in on this trip that I'm a "real nurse" when the MUSC nursing students come to me for help. Yikes, and to think Mandie and I are thinking of coming and being the primary American staff for the hospital.

Thank goodness the Lord knows what He is doing!

Day 2: First Clinic

(Mandie here): I was an "escort" today, which is kind of a loose job description. It included walking patients from triage to doctors, from doctors to pharmacy, and so on. The day started out early for Rachel and I and the several others who went to the clinic site early for registration. I found myself with nothing to do and so started down the line of 150+ people, shaking each person's hand and saying the one work I learned from our bus driver on the way: "oraireota?", which means "how did you sleep?". The first person I spoke to gave me my pet name, a tradition in Uganda. It is Akiki (ah-KEE-kee). By person 50, I had learned the correct response to "oraireota" and several other phrases. Those all came in handy through the rest of the day. I spent some time playing games with Heather and the children, started an IV on a severely dehydrated grandma, pulled a tooth, dressed a third degree wound, and then saw patients on my own. We had a rather large patient load today and the doctors got a little behind, so they put me and Wendy (a med student) together to see patients. That was taking too long, however, so they split us up after the first patient. Most of what we see here is the usual dehydration, malnutrition, and parasite infections. That can get frustrating as I got tired of telling the translator the SAME things over and over, but it is so good to know that even the small things we can offer then can make a big difference in their lives. This was my first day on a medical mission trip where I wasn't a translator and I loved it. I miss being able to communicate directly with patients and several times blurted out Spanish to them, but the opportunities to actually DO the medicine I've been studying was wonderful.

(Rachel here): I worked in triage today from 8:30 to 6:30....what does that mean? Three nursing students and I took 260 blood pressures, heart rates, asked "what brought you here today?," watched people chew up disgusting non-chewable worm medicine and vitamins, and hopefully made the lives of the doctors easier with our many many questions. It was a long day, but rewarding when the leader of the trip made the comment that he would never have gotten such a detailed history from the patients. Overall, I didn't drink enough water and may or may not have bruises from sitting on a hard bench, but will sleep well tonight knowing that 260 people got great health care consults. We keep saying we'll post pictures, but so far have been so exhausted each night it's enough to just write. Maybe tomorrow...they've promised to make the clinic day shorter! Thanks for your comments and emails! I can't wait to share more!

Day 1

Day 1: the “calm before the storm.”  I’m not sure I would have called it that other than that breakfast wasn’t until eight am and we had some free time in the afternoon.  We started out the morning at the local orphanage, hearing the kids sing, playing with them and providing vitamins, and doing check-ups on the children with complaints.  Mandie handed out vitamins and then helped take vital signs while I was the triage person.  I now understand the difficulty in eliciting information from a child who does not speak English and thinks a fever is the same thing as malaria.  After lunch we went on a tour of the local hospital.  Dismal and primitive are the two words that come into mind.  After walking through the maternity ward where women were lying on dirty mattresses recovering from labor, Mandie and I chose not to walk through the other wards gawking at the patients.  While we agree that it’s important to see the state of the health care conditions, we realize that we’ll have plenty of chances come August to be in the hospital and did not want to be two more white faces staring at the misery.

(Mandie writing now)  During the free time, we walked through part of the town with Josh, the photographer, and saw the site for the clinic and the house that is being renovated for Michael and Amanda, the couple overseeing the building of the hospital. This is also the neighborhood where our house will potentially be, so we took some pictures and smiled at our future neighbors and tried to imagine walking down those red dirt roads every day. It seems like a good town to live in. There’s not much that looks familiar, or even comfortable, but the people are warm (well, at least the women and children are) and there is a lot of lush vegetation…and electricity and plumbing...so what could there be to complain about?

After walking around, we came back to the hotel for dinner and evening announcements, etc. What was supposed to be an early night turned into a 4 (and inappropriately named) hour pill-packing “party”. It was not a party. We counted out and bagged packs of 40 multi vitamins, Tylenol, and ibuprofen, while a few people filled prescriptions from the orphanage this morning. At 10:30, we decided to call it quits. Tomorrow we eat breakfast at 6:30 and the few of us who signed up for registration will leave at 7:30. It will be our first real clinic day and everyone is excited to see how it goes and what we see…

WE MADE IT!

After 24 hours of airline travel with another five hours on a bus, we made it to the Masindi Hotel.  Highlights of the trip include the best airline food Mandie and I both have ever had (we recommend Ethiopian Air).  Not only that, but it was a very social airline and we made friends with everyone around us.  The man and his son sitting behind us were flying to Uganda first for a building trip.  After the trip they are flying back to Ethiopia to pick up an eleven year old son they are adopting.  The two women sitting in front of us were going to Ethiopia for a medical mission trip similar to ours.  One of the women is a long time Registered Nurse and Lactation Consultant.  We swapped stories and contact information, Ibuprofen and homeopathic remedies for immune health and detox.  

Tomorrow we will visit the orphanage and conduct well child check-ups for about 100 children and then visit the Masindi Hospital to get an idea of the only healthcare available here.

It’s 8:30 in the evening now and we’ve just finished dinner.  We’ll update more later, but the room hasn’t stopped moving around us and neither of us have any brain power (in which case disregard all typos and sentences that don’t make sense).

We have a professional photographer with us on this trip and he’s been taking both photos and video.  Since we won’t be posting every day, visit the PMI blog to see pictures and updates posted daily: www.palmettomedical.org

two days and two new websites

So I leave for Uganda in two days! Yikes! :)

Mandie and I have a new website and a new blog for you to follow if you're interested in all things Africa.  Please visit and comment and and thank Mandie for her creative talent. :)

Time to pack. :)

TWO DAYS! :)

Two days from now Mandie and I will be sitting on a plane (hopefully next to each other...keeping our fingers crossed) on our way to Uganda.  Three weeks ago today I was telling Matt that I was ok with Mandie going to Uganda on a site visit without me.  That wasn't acceptable to him so here I am, going with her.  My bags are not packed and I need to work on it.  The pre-travel jitters are starting to set in and I'm constantly having to remind myself to trust the Lord.  I have my vaccinations and my malaria meds and my passport at Mandie's house with hers so that I won't have to go through the process of checking one hundred times to make sure I have everything important.


Mandie got her approval today to go to the March orientation for PIONEERS and they have finally appointed a new area leader for Uganda, so things are finally starting to fall into place on the PI end.  Hopefully we'll be able to start raising support soon!

Yikes it's becoming real!

Oh...check out Mandie's handiwork: http://somethingbeautifulafrica.com

I don't know how often we'll be able to update the blog for this ten days in Uganda, but I am taking my computer so we'll try! :)

Hmm....maybe I should start packing. :)

A website!

Hello friends,

We've just opened the website that hopefully will serve to keep you updated on what we're up to in Uganda over the next year or two. We'll be leaving for Uganda this Friday, March 5th for a preliminary site visit and hope to be able to keep you all updated on what we're doing throughout the week.

Go here for the new website www.somethingbeautifulafrica.com.

Mandie & Rachel