Long Time No Blog

Medical Mission

From February 2nd to February 15th a medical mission with four attendings, two residence, five medical students, a nurse, an architect, one of the women in charge of the scholars program and a photographer came. This was the first medical mission Steve and I were here for and it was supper intense and supper fun. I wish that I could give a shout out to everyone like Steve and make my blog funny and entertaining, but I can’t so I encourage anyone who is reading this to also visit Steve’s blog to get a more complete view of what the medical mission was like.

A typical day ran from 7 am to 11:00 pm. We would get up in the morning set up the pharmacy and clean the large clinic building. The first patients had arrived hours ago and were seated in the shade outside the clinic’s front door. By the time the doors actually opened 30 to 40 patients eagerly waited to be seen by a doctor. Throughout the day the doctors addressed many of the common heath problems here like back pain, stomach pain, malaria, etc. However, they also gave out donated glasses, did mini surgeries (such as removing keloids, small tumors, and cleaning out abscesses), and dealt with prolapsed uteruses. We also had many runs to Kinoni/Masaka to pick up much needed drugs, lab supplies, and food stuffs. Throughout the week we also go to visit the scholars and some schools they could potentially go to.

The two coolest medical things I saw was Stephanie cleaning out her first abscess and Dave removing two keliods. Clean the abscess was like popping a huge zit (it looked very satisfying – lots of pus!).

One of my favorite parts of the medical mission was socializing with everyone who came. Everyone was so cool and it was awesome to get to know them all. After seven months of monastic life it was so much fun, especially the night time parties.

Pieter

Some of the most cutting edge research on HIV is actually done in Rakai a large town about two hours south of Ddegeya. Studies have shown that that circumcising males reduces the risk of HIV transmission during sexual intercourse up to 50% of the time. So, a couple weeks after the medical mission I went to Kampala to pick up a middle aged doctor from Chicago named Pieter who was coming in to perform circumcisions. So while I was eagerly yelling “Pieter, Pieter Smit” to every middle aged man who walked out of the gate, a young man with a hiking backpack on came up to me and said “Are you Becky”. Pieter ended up being a first year surgical resident at the Staten Island Hospital.

Throughout the week Pieter preformed six circumcisions. The first and most notable was Peter’s (the boy who lives in the house next to the clinic). During his circumcision he yelled many things, but the funniest moment was when he yelled that the town’s malalu “crazy man” told him that if he hung around the clinic too often the white man would come and cut off his penis.

Anther funny moment concerning circumcisions happened a couple days ago when John asked Kazungu (one of the younger boys who was circumcised) how he was doing. Kazungu calmly replied by asking when his foreskin was going to grow back?