Monday January 20, 2009

Happy Birthday Mr. Luke!

Today was something else. Chaos is just the norm on Mondays I’ve come to learn. Rounds took Susan (the nurse staying here an extra week) and I three hours this morning with trying to start our new program, Medica Mamba (remind me to write more about that later) and admitting two new people Anne-Marie sent over from the clinic. Then to the clinic to find a mass of people still waiting there. Four TB patients with rendez-vous waiting for me, one of whom (Terna) scratched up half of her face, ending with a black/bloody eye because she fell off her horse in travel to the clinic. Plus trying to wade through confusion of what meds had been given previously. Then three new girls admitted with TB (adding to our two earlier in the morning it seems we are having a TB explosion). Then I had to see a whole family of kids who really could use Medica Mamba and should probably be registered in our Cinderella program and an abscess I needed to open who had been waiting all day. After that mess of chaos Susan and I had to carry a bed all the way down to the hospital (because we are now full…again…), organize the TB meds and new patients and try to start two of our malnourished kids on Medica Mamba. It’s craziness, but that is nursing in a nutshell and maybe Haiti for that matter.