Mary in Malawi

First of all, thanks to everyone who has written emails and who made comments on my blogg! =) I love to get comments! Unfortunately is it not possible to respond to the comments.. But keep posting them, I love to read them! =) And also thanks to mum, christian and Sofia for sending my packages! =) sofia sent me a movie. I only say: Never see movies recommended by my sister...... If you're not up for one week without sleeping and years of therapy, I mean..... Me and Link where sitting petrified and nauseaus when watching "the human centipede"....It was a really mentally disturbing movie. Don't watch it. don't even google it. Let it's creator stay unknown to the world.. ;) awful awful awful awful.

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Today I donated blood. It hurt really bad, everyone who says anything else just tries to play cool. But i ain't to pride to bow. It hurts. Ick. And because I have a rare blood group they kind of drained me, hehe...They took 600 mls over 5 minutes. At home you give 300 mls over 30 minutes.. But well, it feels ok and I will definately do it again, and I had a high hb, 15 g/dl! So I can probobly give sooner than recommended. The blood I gave today will be given to a specific woman in medical ward. It is fun to know where it goes.. =) You never know that at home. And at home, they also mix red blood cells from many different people in the same bag. Here, you fill a bag of blood from one person, and you give it to the patient. No mixing, no dividing into blood cells. Just full blood. Straight from the cow... ;-)

Immigration are continuing bugging us. Thrid time there, they still won't accept our papers. They say new things everytime, new signatures we need, new letters etc etc.. This is actually the face of corruption. They know that if they keep being difficult like this, white people will finally bribe them to accept their papers. But we're refusing to fall for that, so we just keep on collecting every stupid thing they ask for. We have now got everyone important at the hospital to back us up, write them letters, and one of them will follow us there next time to help us. It is just so annoying... You come to country to help people, and all you get from the government is trubble and people trying to steel your money.

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Some of the staff members are not really willing to to do the triage. Before they didn't do anything about it, and now they suddenly have to look at a lot of patiens and take decisions. They are annoyed with us and want to go back to ”the old system”. I.e, no system at all. So right now it feels like trying to get water to run upwards.... Or trying to swim in thick syrup. But I guess these are obstacles everyone who tries to introduce something new to a place like this will meet.. But that doesn't make it less frustrating...I think a problem is also that we who are from the western part of the world are used to handle in a certain way in emergency situations. We are used -and trained- to take control, make sure everything is done and get the patient stablized. Here they are used to another way of working, and they don't really have thee same emergency thinking as we do. But I think it's a kind of cooping mechanism. There are so many terrible things here, and so many deaths compared to home. So I think that people who live here all their lives have to make a bigger distance between themselves and the patients than we do at home. Im also feeling it.. Iif I would take everything in and take it with me home, i would never sleep or relax...

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Yesterday we got a patient with poisoning. He was almost dead, I couldn't feel his pulse and I couldn't decide wether he was breathinng or not. We got iv in, gave him fluides and atropin to get his heart to work faster. I took his blood pressure and it was 60 / 30 (VERY low). He had a lot of secretion, and needed oxygen immediately. We took him up to the ward, and as of now he has still not woken up. Blodd pressure is better, but it is very uncertain if he is going to live or not..

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In OPD, as far as the triage is being done it actually works well. Yesterday I located at least three small babies in line that where in immediate need of attention to survive. One of them was only 1 week old and was basically not breathing. Fever up to almost 40. I took the baby from the mother and ran up to pediatric to put the baby on oxygen. He is still there, hopefully he will be allright. But it is very uncertain. The onlöy oxygen concentrator available was the one in the isolation ward, where we keep all the measles cases. the baby allready had malnutrion, and probobly pneumonia.. And being in the measles ward.. he will probobly end up with measles as well. But the alternative was to let him die from hypoxia... So sometime here you just have to choose the least bad out of two bad options...

Oh, right now there are a lot of people passing the office. A child just died in pediatric ward. First the mother of the baby walked alone all around the hospital, singing and crying out loud that her baby died. Then she went to get her baby, and everyone at the ward, all the guardians to all the other patients are following her in a sort of cortege.. Some are crying and some are singing. Everyone they are passing either joins them or starts singing. I really think it is a beautiful thing. They care about each other and they show their respect for the mother and the dead baby.. In a way, this is a complete contradiction to what I just wrote about.. But i think that it is the hospital people who needs to make a distance, not others.

Aa I need to ask Link what baby that died.. She is on pediatric today, so she got up all the babies I sent there. I really hope it is not "my" baby, the one I had to put in the measles room...=(

Ok, enough bad things... Good thing!!:

CHRSITIAN IS COMING WITHING TWO WEEKS!!!!!! =)=)=)

it will be amazing to finally have him here... I won't let him go back home! <3

Åh, just det.. Mamma, kan du kolla upp flygbiljetter till mig för julen? Måste boka nu innan det blir för dyrt. Internet här är fantastiskt segt, det går inte att genomföra några internetköp... =(  tack tack! =)