I can't keep up and I can't back down, I've been losing so much time.
~Lifehouse ”
I very much like that song, just in case you were wondering.
It's been a busy week!
Monday was a productive day at work and I managed to cross off a fair few of the things on my To Do list. It is SO good to have Bonga [our new pharmacist] here to get things up and running again in the pharmacy :D I got everything prepared for my second ever visit to Wilo clinic which is the latest place that we have expanded the ARV down referral system to. The first visit was a bit of a trial run as there were only 3 patients [compared to the 60-70 at each Mapuzi/Ngcwanguba day!] but at least it gave me a chance to get the system implemented.
We had long and competitive game of Frisbee, great fun as per. It's now getting dark really early at around 5pm so we have to play by floodlights which makes it pretty difficult to see the Frisbee [not helpful when you have little hand-eye co-ordination to begin with!]. After over an hour of very fast paced play, we ended with the traditional first to three contest, and then there was the weekly eat vs. shower dilemma before Grey's Anatomy at 7.30pm. Since Sam had made dinner, I chose eat :D Grey's is beginning to take things a bit far: a famous surgeon came in and demanded to be allowed to be awake during his own surgery – yeah, okay, that would be allowed! [But we still love it...]
On Tuesday I set off for Wilo with Etienne in the mobile dental clinic. I only had ten expected patients [next month it’s up to around 25 though] and half of them had already arrived when I got there. I was really impressed with the ARV counsellor there – she had made a list of all the patients for me, set aside a room, called them all in and dispensed their ARVs perfectly. It was miraculous considering the mass amount of mix ups that happened [and still happen!] at the other two clinics. Hopefully as we increase the clinic number gradually the Wilo days will become a really successful part of our ARV programme. It's especially rewarding to see this clinic work because I have been able to oversee the setting up and training of the counsellors myself :D
I spent the rest of the morning prepacking in the front seat of the dental truck while Etienne saw his patients. I had just fallen asleep with my half empty container of Ibuprofen when he finished up and we set off along the long road to Mqanduli to fill up the petrol tank. By the time we arrived back at Zithulele it was 4pm leaving very little time to get anything started in the pharmacy. We're having a major crisis in terms of vacolitres [the liquids used for drips] so I did the order for that then did all the remaining paperwork for Wilo before leaving the pharmacy at 5pm for the first time in absolutely aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages!
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| Life in the TK: kids beating goats |
A pizza outing had been planned for that evening so we all met in the Plaza to arrange lifts. It then became clear just how many of us were going – it was a mass exodus from Zithulele as eighteen of us left for Papazela's in a convoy of four 4x4s! We arrived and rearranged the furniture to fit our giant group in: me, Sam, Anita, Etienne, Shannon, Marlie, Megan, Liz, Sarah, Bernard, Rob, Surabi, Pria, Asanda, Jess, JT, Ayanda and Mhla. The pizza was great as usual, overall a top night :)
Wednesday was Zithulele ARV clinic: with only 95 expected patients compared to last week's 146 it seemed almost manageable! Bonga and I worked together for most of the morning so that she could learn the ropes. Thanks to some serious ineptness at the medical depot, we are out of D4T AGAIN. There are very very few patients who don't take D4T as part of their drug regimen so everyone had to only get one month of treatment and is coming back next month, meaning that on that date, we will have all these 95 patients plus however many were given multiple months treatment in March and April – yay! We think that we might be able to get round it by prepacking for the 95 patients so they can just pick them up without having the wait in the queue...providing we get some more D4T of course.
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| The dispensing table |
After work we had Wednesday's Frisbee match, this time with some of Tom's friends as guest players. It was another extremely fast game during which one Frisbee was thrown out of the court never to be found again and another ended up in the sewage pit, much to Karl's despair [it was his favourite Frisbee]. I got completely flattened at one point when George ran straight into me as we went for the same Frisbee – Frisbee injuries are getting far too common, at least one person goes home bleeding/bruised each week!
After Frisbee, Jess, JT, Asanda and I did a beautiful rendition of an HIV/AIDs education drama as a practice run for a performance [which, after people saw this one, we will NOT be doing] at a local football match which aims to encourage people to take an HIV test. It was all improvised, but if there was a script it would look like this:
Jess [woman with multiple partners]: *dances around oblivious of her HIV+ status*
Me [the HIV virus]: *chases Jess in a menacing way*
Jess: *goes for an HIV test*
Asanda [the nurse]: *gives Jess some ARVs*
JT [the ARVs]: *jumps on my back, throws me on the ground and stands on my head, symbolically killing the HIV*
As you can see, the climactic scene got a bit violent! It brought those watching to tears [although sadly not because they were so deeply moved...] Anyway, after we'd recovered from that excitement and Sam and I had had fajitas for dinner [with homemade tortillas!] it was time for cell group. We had a long discussion about community – what it means in our context in Zithulele, the pressures of living in a place where friends and colleagues are one and the same, whether it’s possible to have a long distance community - all interesting stuff :)
On Thursday I got up and did some paperwork at home for an hour or so after falling asleep before completing it the previous night. I went up to ARV clinic around nine and it looked blissfully empty so the morning spent there was not so stressful. Lots of defaulting patients [including a few kids] came back much to my happiness so it was a very positive day in terms of that :) We did, however, discover that we also had seriously low stock of another two drugs so everyone was getting the bare minimum of ARV rations...again!
Anecdote of the day: Taryn saw a patient and noticed that their file number was Z5000; a little odd considering that we only have about 1400 patients in the system at the moment. After some investigating, it was discovered that the patient registration book had a unique numbering system: 1098, 1099, 2000....2098, 2099, 3000...3098, 3099, 4000...I think you get the idea! Bit of a basic counting fail right there - and that's reason number 837475 that I love working here so much :D
After clinic was over – and Zandile and I almost fainted when the last patient left before 5pm – we had a new extracurricular for Zithulele: ceilidh dancing. Our current medical student, Rob, is from Calendar so between the two of us we managed to get everyone down to the Frisbee court for a little taster session of everyone's favourite Scottish pastime :) There was a good turn out and after some rather amusing attempts we managed to get the Gay Gordons going. Having mastered that one [well, to be honest, there's just a tad more work to be done!] we moved onto a slightly more hectic dance and introduced Strip The Willow which tired everyone out considerably! It was a lot of fun and will hopefully become a regular fixture on the Zithulele extramural calendar, watch this space...
xxxx
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