A Nurse's Work is Never Done

There is no such thing as a 12 hour shift or regular working hours around here. Duty calls all times of day…in the middle of class, during meals, and (my favorite) just after I’ve settled into bed. Sometimes they are even sick! =) It’s good to be useful though.

This past Sunday is a great example. It is the one day of the week when volunteers are off duty. I was leaving the Volunteer House after breakfast to find Paolo, 7, sitting outside crying. He lifted up his shirt to show me some fresh scrapes on his belly from a fall. Now, he knew not to come inside but was patiently hanging around until I appeared. Smart little guy, he knows I won’t turn him away. As most of them do, it seems. Bugger, didn’t know I was so transparent! We ceremoniously cleaned and applied bandaids, and he proudly showed me his healed boo-boos the next day.

We currently have mumps spreading around the children, and each morning there seems to be another waking up with a swollen neck. I’m a little relieved to have missed the chicken pox outbreak this summer. The one thing children are great at sharing is all their bugs!

My toughest patient has been on-going, a lady from a nearby village who came in late one night with second and third degree burns covering her arm and face. She had tripped and spilled hot porridge on herself. Thankfully Dr. Frank was here for the weekend clinic! She says she’s 60 years old, but looks every day of 95; she’s tiny, tough, and completely endearing. She lives the next village over, so we asked her to come back every other day (instead of every day) for dressing changes, but she no-showed, and we sent out a search party…it was 4 days before she came back. With burns, that’s a looong time. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I was NOT prepared for what I saw…between the smell, the pus, and the collection of charred skin…

It was nearly 2 hours of painstaking work, painful for her, and it was just the beginning. Despite giving her as much Tylenol and Motrin as one liver should have, I could not make her comfortable. No surprise. She cussed me out in Swahili (or at least scolded me) and practically levitated from pain, but stuck it out. Like I said, she is TOUGH. After two consecutive days, I could still not get it under control; it was just too far gone to clean well with my equipment, and I was in tears (again—goodness!) for her pain and my frustration on not being able to help her like I wanted. With the dirt, dust, and poor living conditions, it is nearly impossible to keep a wound clean and infection-free. This is where my Western medicine training got the best of me again…I know how it could be done, but did not have the means to do it, and it was my mental roadblock. Mama India gave me perspective in that she has seen worse here, and the man survived.

Nonetheless, Dr. Frank obliged to bring some GOOD drugs from his clinic to make her comfortable so we could get her scrubbed properly. Now, this is a great doctor for you—despite being sick himself, Dr. Frank agreed to make the hour drive with an IV cocktail for the following day’s visit. It was redeeming when she made sure I would be there, not just the doctor, for the following day.

So today was quite the experience with my little lady. Dr. Frank was a beautiful sight as he brought his magic meds for our burn scrub. I understood his dilemma in not having exactly what he wanted either for her sedation, but it was better than nothing. It was a little rough going down and coming out, but she did well. We accomplished what we needed, got her fixed up for today, and sent her home with some food and medicine to survive until we meet again.

Tomorrow is another day with new challenges, but today we did what we came to do. All in a day’s work.

Thursday 15 Nov