This past week was our last week of clinicals, and I am completely done with clinicals for nursing school!!!!! That is exciting! I tried to make the most of my last two days of being in the hospital.
Monday I spent in the Pediatrics ward. It started out pretty slow, but ended up filling up by later morning. The ward, just like the Male and Female wards, is split up by the medical patients and the surgical patients. Medications are only given out twice a day, and so the only thing for us to do was talk with the kids and their parents. It’s a pretty fun job, even though it is hard to communicate with some of the Tonga-speaking people. The children all seemed to be relatively stable, so I worked my way through the ward looking at their charts and x-rays. There are so many broken bones here! Maybe it just seems like more, because the children stay in the hospital for a few days with their injury. One little boy, about 2 years of age, was there because his friend got hold of an ax and accidently hit his hand with it. He had the nastiest gash on his hand, and is truly lucky he didn’t lose his entire hand. I hope it heals well, because it was awfully deep. You don’t typically see 2 yr olds coming in with injuries from an ax! I’ve also noticed many children come back with problems from their broken bone. For instance a deep infection starts in the bone, or ulcers form on the skin where they might have had surgery- lots of nasty things!
One little girl, who is almost 3, was admitted in the morning. She was absolutely beautiful, but was breathing much too quickly. Her mother brought her in because she had a couple times at home where she would start coughing, would have trouble breathing, would start foaming at the mouth, stop breathing briefly, and then would all of sudden start again. It was terrifying for her to watch her do this. Shortly after her initial assessment, she had one of those episodes. She was breathing at 90 breaths per minute, and had hardly any air movement in her right lung. Once she started getting worked up, she was trying everything she could to keep breathing, and she was only able to for a minute or so, and then she quit breathing for us. At our assessment I asked if we could put some oxygen on her to help her out. They kind of passed it off, because they really only use oxygen when absolutely needed (which it was!). When she quit breathing, they then thought it was time for the O2. We started bagging her to keep her oxygenated. It took several minutes, but she eventually started breathing again and came to. She was extremely tired afterwards and just wanted to be held by her mama. When she first started her whole episode she was continually yelling “help me, mama” in Tonga. It about killed me!
The next day I came in to see how she had done through the night, and she had had a few more episodes. She had also had a 40 minute seizure with one of them, probably because of not getting an adequate supply of oxygen. While there, one of our students- Joe - questioned the doctor about her needing more care than they could provide for her. He convinced the Doc to transfer her out to Livingstone. She was transferred by ambulance with a nurse who could care for her if it happened again. We found out the day after that, that she passed away during one of her episodes because they did not facilitate her breathing and she never started again on her own. After spending time with the little girl and the mom, it was devastating. The only thing that was found on her x-ray was that she had aspirated something that was caught in her right bronchi. While this is a serious thing, it could be easily fixed in the states. I think suctioning her would have worked, but they don’t have the resources to do it. It was so sad because she had been totally fine a few days before until she choked when eating lunch. Anyway, another sad story to add to the rest, but I think some of these stories have impacted me most.
On a much happier note, my heart has been stolen by a 2 ½ year old little girl named Florence. I hadn’t spent much time with her until these past couple weeks, but I connected with her quickly. She was kind of shy at first, and we spent quite a bit of time reading a book about farm animals. She is particularly fond of chickens, and we pointed every one of them out several times. Some of the animals were foreign to her since the book is from the States and our farm animals look a bit different. She sticks pretty close to me. The other day I was holding two babies and had absolutely no more room on my lap for even her small self. But, she found room- on my ankles. I had my legs out in front of my and she was frustrated she couldn’t fit on me and proceeded to plop down on my lower legs. She also loves to so “NO” whenever I try to get her to do something. I play along with her saying “yes” and it becomes quite the little game. She giggles and giggles and says “again” at anything she enjoys- spinning, being thrown up in the air, etc.
A few of the other students have also really connected with the kids and were very interested in sponsoring the children if at all possible. After they met with the head director and biggest supporter of Children’s Nest Orphanage Homes (http://www.childrens-nest.org/english/index.html), they were very impressed with this sponsorship program. He spoke with them for over an hour all about it, and needless to say, many of us are walking away sponsors! It has been awesome getting to know the kids personally and then being able to pick up their sponsorship. This program uses 95% of the sponsorship money directly on the child. That’s pretty unreal, even compared with Compassion International. As of tomorrow I will be Florence’s sponsor. Mr. Fisher, the Director, was thrilled we are as excited as he is, and says that we will be the first American sponsors this program has. Most are German. They also highly encourage you coming to visit your child. I’m not opposed : )
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| This is Florence, 2 1/2, on the left and her sister Deborah, 5. Oh, and Dixon is peeking through! |
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| Doro and Selena excited about the baloons we brought them. |
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| This is the picture I was trying to create with Selena to my left, and babies Christopher and Grace on my lap, with Florence sitting on my lower legs. My hands were full! |
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| Another one I wouldn't mind bringing home- Christopher. He is 11 mo. old and is just starting to be interested in walking. He is also very fun! |
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| Poor Britt is stuck in the middle. I NEVER wear my hair down going to the orphanage. Bad idea! |
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| The church I attended a couple Sundays ago. The whole church- love this picture! Notice the white people? This is the WY group that was here a couple weeks ago now. |
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| Christine and I with our work of art. This is the poster that went along with our teaching in the hospital. The nurses loved it! |
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| Innovative! A plastic lawn chair + metal frame + large wheels = wheelchair! |
We leave Choma Saturday morning for Livingstone (which I am SO excited for- different foods, AC, tourism, and shopping here we come!), so be thinking of us as we are hugging our children goodbye. It will be hard!!! See you all very, very soon…
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