Well the bug that moved in during the graduation ceremony some weeks back is still around. It went away for a day or so, then came back with a vengeance two weeks back- runny nose, body aching, extreme tiredness, the racking cough at night... no sleep, painful chest/abdominal muscles from all the coughing during the night. By this past Sunday i'd built up a sizeable sleep deficit, and couldn't go on any more. The good doctor booked me off this whole week - for which i'm so grateful. Penicillin didn't do much for the superimposed bacterial infection. I'd been through Red clover tea- which helped some- but soon lost it's effectiveness - wish we'd had some echinacea - i'm sure that would have done something. Any how, i moved over to elder berry flower tea, grapefruits - great expectorants, but the thing kept up a tyrannical nightly invasion. the kind doctor living next door to us loaned me her Vicks cough mixture - a potent aniseed extraction in 10% alcohol...! It took the breath away never mind the cough- worked for about an hour then the coughing was back, hacking as ever. I took to supplementing the cough mixture with chewing some actual aniseed seeds - they worked longer... Then yesterday i finall resorted to doing my own artificial fever therapy (don't try this alone at home... there must always be some one around). My old Mum and the maid were around, so i climbed into the hot bath and raised my temperature to 39.5*C for half an hour. Sweated real good, then showered down with invigorating cold water - like you can only get in Lesotho... I lay around in some towels for another couple of hours, watching 3abn, dosed now and then, and surfaced just before lunch. Took a warm shower and washed all the sweat out of my hair, and got lunch on the go. never felt better! and for the first time in weeks i slept through last night!
This past Sabbath was my husband's birthday, and as a treat, we took an afternoon hike down across the valley and up to mole Hill on the other side with a real mottly crew... There were 3 youngsters from the US working as student missionaries for Hope Channel TV, a young doctor from Australia, another from Sweden, and more from the UK, together with some of the local youth who acted as guides. They introduced us to some simple games played here by children here in Lesotho
This is the department of health in Lesotho, and looking down on some of the other goverment buildings in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho. it was here that the Lesotho Nursing Council launched it's manual on nursing procedures for all hospitals in lesotho, to standardise the level of nursing care in the country. This is possibly a first in Africa if not in the world - well done Lesotho! There is actully a drive to improve on quality assurance in medical care in the country. This is being driven by the Lesotho-Boston Health Alliance, where Boston University is liasing with and guiding local health workers in quality assurance programmes, problem solving, and leadership development. Medical students from Boston University get to do their electives here at various hospitals in Lesotho, including Maluti. There is also a continuous nursing education programme, and monitoring of nursing records. Every Monday here at Maluti we have a 'nursing round' where nurses on duty gather in a selected unit in the hospital to study and discuss a particular case of interest. Then on Tuesdays, we have a class covering a particular nursing procedure from the nursing manual. The same topic is covered for a month, to enable as many nurses possible to attend. Some may be of duty on that day or on night shift, so the following week they may have the opportunity to attend. We have a little incentive for attendance... each nurse that arrives in class gets a treat; this month we're doing CPR, and the nurses get a chocolate at the end of the lecture/practical... after they've written their post test:-)
one, two, Three n up...! Our Maluti Hospital drivers get to do call out on the hospital's ambulance from time to time when there's an accident near by, and they usually end up having to help extricate and load patients. So some basic accident scene management training was hugely appreciated - and enjoyed by the men - and a pretty sharp bunch they were - caught on real quick!
did some reviewing. We had huge fun packaging and loading one chap and rushing him off to casualty :-D
The first year nursing students have just completed their basic life support module - all 32 of them. Quite a mission to put them all through CPR practical in a couple of hours, but with a bit of planning and technique, we did it:-D. They're a pretty smart bunch, so they caught on real quick, and retained it well - they remembered everything at the end of the 4 week block. For their exam, I divided them up into two teams, and relay style, we did CPR two-man rescue, switching roles after one cycle each. It gave me a chance to evaluate each ones skill in compressions and handling the bag and mask, and they had great fun- after all, resuscitation is team work. And the bandaging? well that went off well too - with some innovations... Just today i had great fun teaching the midwives neonatal resuscitation and intubation (pics to follow). Well, if they didn't have ears, their broad grins at sighting the vocal cords would have gone right round their heads...
