Saturday, May 18th
Today we went to Sanya Juu for another day of outreach clinic. Unfortunately, it was a rainy and cold day (cold for Tanzania…it felt like a heat wave for the cold we’ve been having this spring in the midwest) so we did not have as many patients come today as yesterday. Today I think we all felt more comfortable speaking with patients to get their histories and perform physical exams to assess their chief complaint(s); this was a really neat experience and is really good practice for any of us wanting to go into the medical field. A couple of things stood out to me today and it all relates to lack of education with people’s health and their past medical histories. We saw several patients who would come in with rather high blood pressure and when asked if they had history of this, they would say yes and that they were given medication which “they finished because they felt good;” another woman came today complaining of a couple months of a sore throat and said she had been already given an antibiotic which she had been taking “whenever she felt the pain was worse”as opposed to taking it daily until the antibiotic course was finished. Teaching and educating these patients on their medications was something so simple for us to do, but so huge and important for them.
The building we used for our clinic today was an amazing facility, we used a school house in a village and it was impressive the education they receive there. I know many of our initial thoughts of their education may be to think the worst, but I was extremely impressed with the details and level of difficulty with the material they were learning. In fact, there were several children there today and one of the 10 year old girls was able to explain how the digestive system works! We learned a couple different games to play with the children and in return we taught them how to do the hokey pokey, hopscotch, and several nursery rhymes and bible school songs.
I’m hoping for a little more sunlight and a little less rain tomorrow (and the next several days..) so we can enjoy all Tanzania has to offer.
-Halie
I am so blessed to be doing what I love to do the best, is teaching! This is a great team and I have been able to work with them to help them learn about medical conditions and assessment skills. They are doing a great job. I will be keeping my doctors busy at the clinic on Monday, because many of the patients from the outreach clinic are being brought to Selian for them to see. I have given the patients money for transportation, because they cannot afford it, so that we can bring them for treatments. These people are so poor and had given up and I praise God we were able to provide them with some Hope. I am so grateful for my past experience here in the medical field that I know many doctors and was able to refer patients to these doctors.
We saw a little 4 month old baby with a large tumor on her face. It was so very sad. The mom said that she was born with it but it is growing. I made some phone calls and I have made an appointment with her to go to Muhimbili Hospital in Dar to see a surgeon who can do surgery on this baby. We also are helping her financially to get there and help with the surgery.
Maddie would have been going through her high school graduation ceremony, if she would have been home today. So the staff and I surprised her with a graduation ceremony. We sang to her in Swahili and then they made her a special dessert. What a special young lady that she would give up her graduation ceremony to come and serve the people of Tanzania. I hope we made it a special evening for her.
Mama Gayle
