My Little Story

The most unlikely best day ever: We woke up soooo early. By 6am we were awake and getting ready to leave. It was only the three of us, Maeve, Supriya, and I, who decided we wanted to go to the waterfall. And although we were ready by seven the driver didn’t arrive until 10am. But it was ok! We piled into the back, Roland sat in the front with the driver, Maeve put on her tunes, and we were on the way. On the drive over we bought sugar cane from a woman on the road, saw a money on the back of a truck, and drove past a mango grove. We rocked out to Adele, Mitski, and Kenny Rogers. As we left Greater Accra we turned onto a road that was heavily washed away by the rain. It felt like a roller coaster going over some of those bumps and turns, but the car survived. This is when we started asking for directions. Every half an hour we would stop and ask the way to Wli Waterfalls. And six hours later, we finally arrived. Roland had jollof rice for us and we ate dinner on a bench in a grove of trees. I fed my chicken skin to a stray dog and Maeve had a local worker catch a chicken so she could hold it. After eating we hiked for about 30 minutes to the waterfall. It was beautiful. We walked in the water, took beautiful pictures, and skipped rocks. And then, right as the sun was going down, thousands of bats started flying around in the sky. It was beautiful. We got back to the car right as it was starting to get dark and started our trek home. This time there was no rocking out to music or munching on crackers. There was just sitting and sleeping and quiet chatting. Around 11pm we finally got home. The day was long and a majority of it was spent in the car, but it was one of the best days on the entire trip. It was magical to see the bats and the waterfall. It was a privilege to get to see another part of Ghana, the Volta region and volta lake. It was so fun spending the day with Maeve and Supriya and Roland. It was the most unlikely best day ever.

week Four

For our last week in the hospital, I was in the outpatient department. This is the busiest and most hectic department in the hospital. They see all nonemergency cases and decide if the patient needs treatment, or admittance to the emergency room or in patient department. This week I took a couple days to go to the asthma clinic and the neurodevelopment clinic (again), which were both so interesting! In the OPD the doctor I was shadowing admitted a few children for dehydration from diarrhea and vomiting. We also had several children who had skin rashes or some sort of ringworm. The patient I remember the most was this little girl around six or seven. She was returning for a follow up after presenting with a cough. She was chatting and mumbling the whole time which was fun because usually the kids are too scared or uncomfortable to say much. The doctor used her stethoscope to examine her heart and breathing. When she finished, she mumbled, mostly to herself, “chest is fine.” to which the little girl repeated, “Chest is fine?” like a parrot. The doctor smiled and nodded, “yes, chest is fine.” The little girl nodded like she approved and immediately started babbling about something else. She was adorable. On the last day I kind of began things where I started. I was still in the OPD for the first few hours, but I was with the doctor I had shadowed my very first week. And for my last few hours me and the medical student went up to Dr. Nyarko’s office and interviewed her about the cerebral palsy clinic project. So, I kind of feel like I finished a full circle. Then we had lunch one last time in the kitchen and went home. It was a bittersweet feeling. That weekend we mostly just ran last minute errands before everyone left Saturday night. On Friday night we went to one of the nurse’s house and his girlfriend made us banku and tilapia. It was delicious and so nice of them to feed us like that!

week Three

For week three I was in the emergency department, but I also jumped around a little bit. For the first day there were three of us shadowing in the ER and I really didn’t want to get in the way, so I sat in the corner and observed. It was interesting. I saw several IV insertions and a feeding tube insertion. We also got to attend a couple lectures with the medical students. I loved being able to sit and learn and take notes. I didn’t realize how much I missed being in a classroom. This week we were in surgery again. We watched the excision of a frontal dermoid cyst, an undescended testis, a bilateral hydrocele, and the excision of an extra finger and two extra toes. The final procedure was the most interesting, it was a colonoscopy of a four-year-old and then they gave her a temporary colostomy bag because they found that the tissue around her rectum was too infected and needed some time to heal. On Thursday I went to the sickle cell clinic and learned all about sickle cell anemia. We even got to go into the lab and see a blood smear of sickled cells vs normal cells. We met the most adorable little boy. He was around four and he was such a little punk! I distracted him for a while and got him to draw on the back of the prescription pad, but then he got bored. He was running around all over the place and not listening to his mother who laughed while she disciplined him. Finally, the medical student I was with decided to play a hand slapping game with him. But when he slapped her hands, she gripped his wrists and wouldn’t let him go. He started giggling and trying to break free. You could tell he was frustrated but he was having so much fun he couldn’t stop laughing. On the final day I bounced around from the ER to the neurodevelopment clinic, to the family planning clinic again because I just loved it so much the first time. This weekend was probably the most amazing out of all three of them. We drove all the way up to the Volta region to see Wli waterfalls. It took us six hours to drive there but it was so beyond worth it. The waterfalls were beautiful! They’re the highest falls in West Africa and the fourth highest in the world. We got there right before sunset, so we also got to see a swarm of bats chilling on the mountain side and flying around in the air. It was a magical experience.

Week Two

My second week at the hospital I was in the physiotherapy clinic. Three days a week they have a special clinic for parents who have children with cerebral palsy. I have very complicated feelings about the PT clinic. I loved the opportunity to watched the delayed development of the children and how the therapists try and encourage the children to develop those skills and strengths. On the other hand, there was a lot of crying. Like a lot. It wasn’t until the last day that one of the therapists explained to me that they’re not always in pain, they’re just confused and frustrated. She asked how I would feel if I was forced to write with my non-dominate hand and I admitted I would hate it. She said that’s how the children feel. And they have no other way to communicate except to cry. Which is fair. I have language and I still want to cry all the time. But when all of the children start crying together and their screams harmonize, it becomes…a little overstimulating. But the physiology of their development and the therapy was so interesting it was still my favorite week at the hospital. Their CP clinic is a new project Dr. Charles has been working on with the PML Hospital. Their goal was to reach 100 mothers and they’ve been teaching people since August. They educate the mothers on causes of CP, ways to handle their child safely, feed them safely, and exercise them to encourage any sort of independence that they can. They also try and dismantle stigma and unteach myths that the mothers hear about their children’s disease. It’s not their fault, they’re still good mothers, their children are not cursed. One of the mothers came in with twins, one of which had CP. On the last day of the CP clinic she had to take the other child to the OPD because she had a slight fever and wasn’t feeling well. The medical student I was with and I watched her son while she was gone. He was the most adorable child. We fed him lunch and held him until he fell asleep a few hours later. I think I fell in love with every child in the clinic. Who am I kidding, I fell in love with every child I saw at that hospital. That weekend we went to the Legon botanical gardens and went to church and institute on Sunday. It was so fun. We tried fufu and got to see a bunch of beautiful trees and nature. It was a good weekend!

Week One

The first week was a whirlwind of new information. It was a little overwhelming in the moment but looking back it doesn’t seem that bad. On our first day at the hospital, we got a tour around to the different floors and met Dr. Nyarko, the head attending. She gave us our assignments for the first week and put me and one other girl in the infant in-patient department. For the first two days I watched the doctor interview parents on how their children were doing and assign tests and treatments for the nurses to provide. I also watched a lumbar puncture be performed, and a doctor change the bandages of a severely burned child. The next few days I hopped around the hospital. On Wednesday I had the opportunity to witness surgery, which was amazing! We saw the excision of a smegmoma, a right herniotomy, the excision of a suprasternal dermoid cyst, an umbilical hernia, and the excision of a thyroglossal cyst. It was an amazing day. On Thursday we shadowed the HIV clinic and learned a lot about that disease, and on Friday we visited the family planning clinic and got to talk to a public health nurse about family planning and sexual health promotion. This sounds so cheesy but every moment I was in the hospital was a gift. I was learning something every second. I learned so much I didn’t even know what I was learning half the time. But like I said, I was a little overwhelmed that first week so I didn’t go out much after the hospital. The other people in my group went to play football and go out to eat, but I was content with staying in my room and recovering from my culture shock. And I’m glad I gave myself time to adjust because as soon as I did recover from the culture shock, I felt amazing! That first weekend is hard for me to write about. We drove to Cape Coast and visited the Elmina slave castle and Kakum national park. The park was amazing, it was beautiful and fun and interesting. But the castle was a very difficult thing for me to do. I’m still processing how it affected me and how I feel. So I’m not going to write about it on a public blog. But! I the weekend was really cool all things considered. I loved seeing another part of Ghana. Cape Coast is a beautiful city.

Day in the Life of a Global Health Intern

A day in the life of a global health intern isn’t really all that interesting. 7:00: wake up and brush my teeth with bottled water. 7:05: take my malaria pills 7:30: make breakfast. Usually either instant oatmeal or peanut butter on bread 7:50: around this time two people would call a Bolt (uber) and we would be headed to the hospital by 8am. 8:30: arrive at the hospital and shadow! This usually involved sitting and watching and trying not to get in the way. Oh, and asking as many questions as we could when the doctors had a second between tasks. But I mostly wrote my questions down because I didn’t want to bother them too often. Over the course of the four weeks, I wrote down 122 questions. Which averages to about a question an hour. 1:00: go to the kitchen to have lunch that the wonderful kitchen staff would make us. It was usually waakye or fried rice or jollof rice. 2:00: the afternoons were different every day. Sometimes we would go back to the house and sleep, or we would go shopping or go to a museum or park. It kind of depended on how we were feeling that day. 6:00: for dinner we usually ate out or ate leftovers. We went to so many amazing restaurants and had so much good food! 8:00: I tried to be in bed by 8 every night (I know I’m such a nerd) and it worked out the first week, but I didn’t do very well the weeks that followed. At the latest I was usually in bed by 9 or 10.

Dance Forever!

Rock on!