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Hello world of blogging!
I suppose this counts as my first ‘real’ blog instead of just copy-pasting old emails. So this is clearly a significant event – maybe I should get a gold star for remembering to post? Most definitely.
It’s been yet another eventful and busy and wonderful and full week. Time just flies by, for real. Life here now feels totally like it’s been like this forever. It seems normal now that:
- I burn everytime I forget sunscreen,
- my hair gets lighter and skin darker every day,
- that when someone says to meet at 9am it really means 9:30am at the earliest,
- that ‘tea’ is always Rooibos,
- that ‘just now’ doesn’t mean now it means anytime in the future (‘now now’ is actually now),
- that I’ll be called anything from ‘Auntie Hegga’ to ‘Auntie Hatha’ to ‘Auntie Hedar’,
- that children will immediately start coughing or suddenly start feeling ill when I walk by and haven’t paid them enough attention that day,
- that frogs and millipedes and moths will rule the house by the time the sun sets,
- that the day really ends around 8pm when it’s already been dark for an hour,
- that you never just say ‘hello’ it’s always followed by ‘how are you’ (or: sawubona! Unganji?)
- that I will frequently not understand conversations since they’ll either be in Zulu or Dutch
- that every morning starts with singing and dancing and prayer with the whole village
- that HIV status is something incredibly secretive and incredibly stigmatized
- that any kind of hospital visit to any of the multidisciplinary team will always involve a significant amount of waiting (we’re talking hours)
- that nursing here is so much more than any ‘scope of practice’ the RNAO or CNO could ever write up
It’s always hard to sit down and write about what’s been going on here – there is so much I want to say to people, and so many things that have gone on! I think I mentioned last time that a new little girl was coming to Rehoboth and I had developed this new tool for admission and assessment – I’m actually super pleased with how that turned out, and how useful it was to organize all the information (and lack of information) she came with at transfer. Considering she was brought to us directly from a hospital, my expectations for clear info about her current diagnoses, current treatments and relevant forms (like immunization record, ID#, last CD4 count and viral load) were apparently higher than they should’ve been – although she came with 3 different transfer and referral forms and a social worker to do the actual hand off, none of these forms seemed to correlate as to if she had pulmonary TB or not still (she had defaulted on her TB meds and HIV meds [ARV’s] at home 3 times prior to hospitalization and abandonment by her family once admitted). Some of the records said she was on TB treatment, but then didn’t specify what stage of treatment, which meds and the extra ARV that kids with HIV have to be on if they have TB was not listed as a current medication on the form that actually did list the TB med on it. They did send along a package of her current meds, some of which were unlabelled bottles, but it was such a mess that in the end, I decided what we were going to treat her for and how we were going to do it. Ahh, the power of running the clinic!
I love being the centerpiece for the health needs of the kids here – you get to deal with not only the acute events that happen, but also the big picture stuff: I assess and decide upon need for referral and then pursue that referral until it happens by directly contacting the specialists myself. There’s no middle man. There’s only me, and a telephone. The level of independence is amazing. Things can happen so quickly! In just this past week, Ezinhle (our new little girl) was able to have solid appointments with the paediatrician, OT, and audiologist with appointments booked over the next two weeks with the dentist and urologist. It’s all about the connections you have. I’ve really enjoyed the big advocating role that’s part my job now – and that it can be so successful is a big motivation to keep going and keep pushing for the best care possible.
Oh man, there’s just so much awesomeness going on with the nursing part of being here that I seriously can’t even write it down. I love it all. I love that I get to live where I work and can just nurse as a part of regular daily life mixed in with the normalcy of kids going to school and returning, having meals together, etc – it reminds me a lot of my time at L’Arche, where working and living together was a big part of the ethos of care. I know some people have to have that separation between work and their own life, but I think I like it better to not have to distinguish between the two. I like that I don’t have to keep that barrier of ‘professionalism’ in the way of caring for the kids – I don’t have to keep a distance; I can be there and be ‘auntie’ to these kids that have been abandoned and abused and malnourished and neglected and starved for love and acceptance.
This past Sunday afternoon, I organized a village-wide soccer game for all the kids that wanted to join in. I think about 30 or 40 kids came! There may not have been a whole lot of actual soccer played (only 10 were serious about playing consistently), but everyone from 3-12 years old got to be on a team, even if most of the younger ones spent the hour having a water break J There was a lot of hand-balls, off-sides, and I’m sure that more official soccer rules weren’t followed, but I think I can safely call it a success.
Goodness, there’s so much more I could say or write about, but this will have to do for now – I’m much too wordy for my own good.
Turrah for now!
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