I make babies cry!!

Salut!

(This blog was supposed to be for yesterday-4/9- but I was unable to connect to the internet until today!)

I am just finishing up another day at the clinic- it was definitely a hard one today! We had our morning devotions as usual and then saw many sick babies and children. Dr Martin told the nurses that I already know how to give shots, so I ended up giving all the shots today. The main type of shots that are given at this clinic are intramuscular- which means you use a really big, long needle. Yikes! The only kind I’ve given at the hospital in the States is one with a short needle (like for insulin). So I had to give babies and little kids big shots and they screamed and cried. Ah it was awful! I had a knot in my stomach after every single shot. One little boy grabbed my hand that I was injecting with while I was injecting the medicine and it freaked me out! That was by far the most stressful part of the day. My first patient that I gave a shot to was an older man from a tribe that only believes in getting injections from a clinic (I guess they believe pills don’t work?!) so he was very calm and didn’t move a muscle! He told the nurses that if he comes back to the clinic, he is going to look for me! Haha.

Working at the clinic over the past two days has been frustrating in a way because the health care here is obviously much different than the U.S. It is hard to watch patients not buy medication they need because they can not afford it and it is also sad to watch the way nurses use supplies as they can’t afford to throw away used supplies as freely as we do in the U.S. The biggest frustration has been seeing the babies and children that come in and are so sick because their mothers don’t know how to care for them. Many of the children have high fevers and are very dehydrated because their mothers neglect them or don’t know what they need. It breaks my heart and I would love to educate every mother that walks into the clinic…but unfortunately I don’t know any of the tribal languages that these mothers speak. The nurses here hardly educate them so it is a frustrating situation!

I am continuing to learn a lot, though, and am getting lots of practice of different nursing skills in! Tomorrow is vaccination day at the clinic for small children, so that will be interesting! It continues to be very hot and humid; the average day is a temperature of 90 degrees with 80% humidity or more! Uff da! I don’t know if I will ever be able to understand how women wear long skirts, shirts, and head coverings in this weather! Everyone asks me if I am cold when it is 80 degrees…ha! Different worlds!

À toute a l’heure! (See you later!)