Getting My Hands Dirty

So the thing that's really cool, but also really sad, about learning medicine in Africa is I get way more hands on time than I could ever imagine in the U.S. It's cool, of course, because I'm so eager to learn and there's no better way to learn than to do. It's sad because their health system is so poor that they take help anywhere they can-even from students who've never seen the inside of a med school classroom. However, I don't want to discredit the Kenyan doctors (there are no American doctors at St. Joseph's). They are very skilled and compassionate. I only wish I could see them work in a setting where they have unlimited resources.

For each surgery, one students gets to scrub in to assist and everyone else can observe. Dr. Agullo is the only one who does surgery. He was trained as a gynecologist, but does everything-nuts right? Anyway, yesterday was finally my turn to scrub in! It was a minor procedure-the removal of a reoccurring corn (about 3x3 cm) on the foot of a young girl, but it turned ugly fast. My main job was to swab blood and cut stitches. In the U.S., a doctor would use local anesthesia on the foot to numb it as well as a general, but here they can't afford that and they used general. The patient woke up during the procedure and my job soon became laying on her ankle as other students helped hold her down and comfort her. She didn't shed a tear, but every time she let out a little whimper, I kind of winced and sucked in. Dr. Agullo chuckled a bit and said to me, "Ohh I see you are feeling the patients pain." And I was. I honestly can't imagine undergoing someone cutting into me that deep and feeling it.

So today I decided to take a break from surgery to think a little bit and made my way over to the dental clinic.There is one chair in the dental clinic and they basically do two things- extractions and fillings. From about 9-11, my job was basically to do suction for Dr. Britt, a dentist from Sweden, as she extracted about 5 teeth from patients who came to the clinic. Then I was really excited to find that it was a mobile clinic today so Dr. Britt, Lola (a Kenyan dental assistant who basically functions as a dentist when there aren't volunteers at the hospital), Franklin (also Kenyan, a driver and interpreter), and I went to a local primary school where we screened children classes 1-8. I learned to spot cavities by sight and feel, which was really cool. Franklin wrote down the names of all the children who needed to come to the clinic for extractions or fillings and they will be picked up in groups this week and next and brought in for treatment. The really cool thing is the clinic that Dr. Britt works for in Sweden funds the clinic and children can get free treatment up to 16 years old so I'm excited to get some more experience in there before the dental students from the UK come next week and crowd the tiny clinic (it's literally a room with the instruments and one chair and a second room with 3 chairs for waiting). I might even get to numb and/or extract teeth myself. Oh and speaking of numbing-that's all they do. They don't send the patients home with pain medicine so ones the numbness wears off, that's it.

I'm seriously impressed with how much I've been able to learn and do since being here-it's been less than a week and I can only imagine what other opportunities I'll have before I leave!