Mary in Malawi

SENGA BAY!! <3

1) Lake Malawi- senga bay
2) Public transport = back of a truck
3) Me on the beach (senga bay)
4) The room we are supposed to make an emergency room out of...

3 juli

Morning
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I am pissed. Today, Saturday, people were calling me on the phone and knocking the door, and calling "helloooo?" outside the house from 6 am til 8 am in the morning. Just to say Hi. Whyyyyy????? I mean, they just want to be nice.... But please, not 6 am saturday morning!!! Crazy.

it's cold outside.. We have no hot water. Still...! The problem is: We live in a house owned by the nursing school. We work at the hospital. The hospital thinks that the nursing school should fix it. The nusing school think the hoospital should. So they are arguing. And we are freezing. Three weeks now, no hot water.

Probobly you think ”Aaah, she's in Africa. It's for sure hot enough”. But let me tell you; NO. It is so cold! It is extremely hot during three hours every day. Between noon and three o clock. The other 21 hours it is cold and cloudy and dark. Nkhoma is in a high lanscape, lots of mountains.So it's colder then the rest of the country. And right now it´s winter here. July is supposed to be the coldest month, so it will get colder...  It would be OK if we had hot water. Gaaa.... =(

New intresting cases:

A young man whose brain was leaking out of his ear and nose. He had been punched in the head and he got a subarachnoidal hematoma (bleeding in the meninges). The pressure increased in his brain, so his brain started ”coning”, i.e it didn't have enough place in the skull so it started to get pressed down the spine. This man was in so much pain, I've never seen anything like it. He was screaming, scratching the wall, ripping his hair... It was terrible to watch. To survive, he needs brain surgery. But there are no brain surgery in entire Malawi..

Another young man lost his kidney function. We don't know why. He stopped producing urine and he had a kreatinin over 1500.. And for you who work in a hospital, you know what that will say.... I think the highest i've seen before was about 600.. And that was crazy high. To survive he needs dialysis (Mechanichal cleansing of the blood). But we have no dialysis in Nkhoma. They do have it in Llilongwe, but that is maybe 1.5 hours car ride away, and he wouldn't survive without oxygen (I suppose I don't need to tell you that we don't have any portable oxygen tubes?). So, At home this man would survive. Without a doubt. But here, we have to treat him palliative.. We tried to improvise ”home-made-dialysis”, i.e we gave him A LOT of intravenous fluids, and A LOT of furosemid (diuretics/vattendrivande) to try to flush his body of toxins... It was a long shot, It could have worked, but it didn't. No urineproduction at all. I saw him last time on thursday. I suppose he is dead now. I hope so, He was in so much pain...

Ok, I also have some GOOD news! =) The little premature baby ( her name is Gertrude) survived! She has now been discharged and went home with her twin and her mother. There is of course a big risk that her brain has been damaged in one way or antoher, but time will tell I guess...I wish her all the best no matter what.

 
Afternoon
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Ok I am in a little better mood now. Went to the market today, it is a huge market here on saturdays. You can find almost everything.... (if you don't care so much about good quality, of course...). It was very nice! I had company by Link and a doctor from the eye department.

(F*CK!!! The power broke. Blackout. F*ck F*ck F*ck!!!!! Ooo now It came back... Thank God....)

Ok where were I... O yeah, the doctor from the eye department. He is about 70 yrs, and workd here as a volunteer for a few weeks. He is very nice! =)
Also Spot (our dog) joined us to the market. He walked with us through (yes, through) the hospital and all the way to the market. He helped us shop ;) People where somehow a little scared of him.... ;) hihi! He is such a lovely dog.

I also met a friend from the hospital there. Efrida. A third year nursing student here in Nkhoma.

Oh, and we saw a man with a machine gun on his back! Fully dressed in military outfit. Don't know why, Nkhoma is so peaceful it's almost boring (but just almost. It's very nice here, actually).

Real malawians at the market! =)


Now, the internet is starting to collapse again, but at least I got to post this and check my fb and talk to Christian for almost 40 minutes on skype!!! =D I miss him so bad.. It really hurts. And also when nothing works, electricity is shit, water is cold and internet is solw as a snail with lots of luggage I miss him even more...


Yesterday evening we had a little "party by impulse".. We were chatting outside with out gardener, security guard, cook and some of their friends. Then some beer came out... and some music... and then I made food... We were totally 9 people! =) Very nice!


Sikomo!
//Maria