My last day in the hospital. Almost doesn't seem real. Time has really flown by and I have absolutely confirmed that I want to do longer term trips. I'm writing this on Friday, and I'll tell a bit about what happened yesterday on Thursday as well, but it wasn't anything much different from the last several weeks here, so I won't bore you too much. Overall though, I will tell you that the experiences are far more valuable and you gain far more insight into the culture when you are somewhere for more than one week. With one month I feel like I've learned so much, I can imagine spending 6 months would be invaluable to beginning to alter the health care systems of these countries and start moving to self-sustainable health care that is of higher quality.
Rounded with Wegner and Kiong, though there's not as many patients in the hospital right now, so it was a bit quicker. We kept jumping back and forth to the outpatient area to see consults for surgeries. A couple hernias, wounds that needed debridement, and other typical things you would see in an urgent care where you just roll your eyes and tell them that they're fine. One guy came in and said, "I'm sick. Do every lab test possible." We asked what was wrong, do you have this problem or that? "No, I just think I'm sick and you should test me." Ummmmm no. Not with limited resources. Pretty entertaining though. I was like, can we charge him triple and make the hospital some money? We didn't do that though.
I ate lunch and dinner at the Wegner house on Thursday, and Anna took me to the atm to get the money I needed to pay for my stay here in Impfondo. It's been great to get to know them more each day. Dr. Wegner being an EM doctor gives me a lot of hope for my future with what I've watched him do here for the past couple weeks. Aside from his skills as a doctor, he's just an awesome, down-to-earth guy and his family is equally as much. I really hope to keep in touch with them and hopefully can work with them again in the future, be it here in the Congo or elsewhere in the world. Time will tell, but I have a feeling this is not the end of our interactions together.
I also picked up the stuff Corentin made for us. I think he's one of the maintenance guys at the hospital, but anyway I had given him all my fabric and told him what I was hoping to get. He made us several messenger-style bags (which are awesome) and a bunch of scrub caps. Jason going into surgery really wanted to have some cool scrub caps, and I do some surgical trips so equally thought it would be awesome. They also make great gifts for our medical friends. They really are super awesome. Some of them are a bit small, which what can you do. I tried to emphasize that he should make them oversized for us, since Jason and I are bigger than most of the Congolese people.....but I guess the point didn't across enough. But most of them fit pretty good, so I'm not worried. It's awesome to have stuff like this made and to support someone local as well.
We had part 2 of our CPR class on Thursday as well. That was pretty fun. It's been great teaching them something like this and hopefully over time it can be effective. We lost our Stayin' Alive video because the person wasn't here today, but we taught them the song and had them just sing it. They all really got into it, pretty awesome. We split up into groups and I taught another class with Charles translating for me. I've got some great videos and pictures of the class. I had to pretend to die and Dr. Wegner demonstrated a terrible resuscitation, which was hard to play dead to and not laugh hysterically.
I'm sitting at the airport in Impfondo now. Interesting experience. I gave my bags and my passport to someone this morning and they checked me in and paid the stamp fees and such. We had a bit of a scare as this morning when I went to talk to Dario about leaving he was like....um you're leaving today? And they didn't actually have a ticket for me. Yay adrenaline rush! Dr. Wegner chatted with them and luckily the plane wasn't full so they were able to buy a ticket for me. Not quite sure how that miscommunication happened, but that could have been pretty awful. Could have gotten the next flight out on Monday, but arranging a flight home from there would have been a bit tougher with my timeline. Anyway, got my ticket and headed to the airport. Pretty much you walk in, hand the ticket and passport to the grumpy guard, and he tells you to go through. The x-ray machine is still packaged in bubble wrap, so Becky told me just to walk past it and don't stop unless someone yells at me. So here I am, sitting in the waiting area (they're still unloading the plane from the incoming group....remember how long that takes from my prior stories? Looooooooooong if you forgot). Pretty funny that I went through zero security. Very trusting they are I guess. Maybe that's why there's been some plane fiascos in the area over the last few weeks. They might want to up their security a tad. Probably won't happen.
I'll be flying into Brazzaville, and I'll meet up with Dr. Harvey who had a meeting with some of the government officials a few days ago. They met to talk about approving a nursing school at the hospital and the government recognizing the diplomas. And they were approved, so that's pretty cool. We'll see what happens with that in the future, but there's a lot of potential for growth and impact. He is leaving for the states for some personal medical stuff, so be praying for him for sure. He flies out of Brazzaville on Saturday night, and I'm going to see if I can get an earlier flight than Monday as well. There's some craziness with me trying to get my license for residency, so if I can get back a few days earlier rather than sitting in Brazzaville doing nothing, it would be worth it. There's a flight change fee probably, but I'm hoping that I can try to talk them into switching me for free because of the work we've been doing at the hospital. You never know.
The excitement of the blog is coming to an end, and at this point it's just the traveling and probably the chaos of all that, so I won't bore you. I will try to post a bit when I'm back and reflect a little more on things that happened with some time to think about it all. Oh, our 27 week premature babies died last night, don't know if I mentioned that. We were hoping, but were kind of skeptical. One died actually I think during the day and then the other one when the generator went out and he stopped getting oxygen. Sucks. Anyway, not meaning to end on a giant sad note. This trip has been filled with great ups and downs. I've made tremendous connections and gained vast experiences in medicine and public health that will better allow me to serve people in the future. It's hard watching people die without being able to provide the best care possible, but doing the best you can do is all we can do. The strength, perseverance, and passion that I see within the people here is inspiring. Especially Dr. Wegner, Dr. Kiong, and Amanda (nurse), who are thrown into the fire every day with trying to save these patient's lives with sometimes virtually nothing.....I've seen it be taxing over a month, over a longer period of time I can only imagine, and my admiration for all of them is great. Pray that they continue to have the strength to endure and treat these patients with the best medical care they can. They need wisdom, and they need basic supplies. But sometimes it's just hard to get it from one place to another. I'm amazed at what they do with what they have as is though.
My flight from Impfondo to Brazzaville went well. No problems, which is somewhat amazing. It's crazy how you really don't even know when the flight will come in here. They don't exactly have a schedule that they follow. We got a text from Stephanie that she was boarding and taking off, and then we knew we had about an hour until the flight landed. Then the baggage takes forever, so you have plenty of time. But if you didn't have someone coming back from Brazzaville, you pretty much would have no clue when the flight was landing. Anyway, flight was good, except for the tiny little airplane that felt like at one point it would snap in half. These planes are sooooo old it's entertaining and keeps the adventure alive. Also, you choose your own seats, so I couldn't understand why with the multiple open rows, two people sat next to me in my row and made it quite cramped. Whatever I guess.
Adolphe met me by the baggage claim and did his thing so we just walked past everyone the bags. I don't know if they normally scan everyone's or not. I went back to Hotel Bravo where I met with Dr. Harvey and we ate lunch. He then arranged to have them bring me to the Ethiopian airline place and I tried to get my flight changed. I ended up getting it changed, though not for free as I was hoping, but it was cheaper than what they initially said a while back. I tried the whole missionary doctor approach and he said if it was a new ticket he would give me a discount, but "rules are rules" and he can't cancel a change fee. Who knows if that's true or not, but hey, I'll be coming home two days earlier, which will help a lot with all that I have to get done. Pretty much just chillaxin' for the evening. Only slept about 2 hours last night with all the packing, and we have to be at the airport at 11am tomorrow, so I should be able to sleep a bit. I want to sleep on the plane though so that I'm back on normal Chicago time when I arrive. We'll see how that works.
If you've read all of these posts, I'm impressed and grateful. I hope you found inspiration and encouragement, connected with the difficulties that the people here face (both patients and medical staff), and were moved to maybe help more trips like this happen in the future. Support from people like you is what makes it possible for the work to continue, and global health is something that affects everyone of us in every country. EBOLA is bringing that to light, I think. Contact me with any questions, and you can always go to our website for more ways to partner with us and support us: www.makeachangeinternational.org
Thank you so much for the support. God bless you!
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