Key words from the past week

- Sunday evening bon fire, with bananas and chocolate

- Making posters to hang in surgical 2.... If they will be to much use? Not really. If it was voluntary? Not really. But we do as we're told. Henrik had to model his foot for the masterpiece!

- One of the patients has nicknamed Henrik for Mjomba (Uncle) and Shandell for Mama Kidogo (Little mama)

- Both of us have been treating burn patients this week. It's basically stretching of the limbs where the burned skin is. Very-very painful for our patients! In some cases we are practically supposed to stretch until the skin starts to crack and bleed. I can tell you this: It most certainly doesn't make you feel like a good person, but unfortunately this is very necessary so the patient doesn't get contractions in their joints (so I guess it makes you a good therapist?).

- We celebrated Karianne's birthday (Norwegian nurse). I made Banana cake with chocolate chips!

- Henrik joined an orthepedic surgery!

- I've been treating a child who hadn't been walking for two weeks, because of loss of strength and truncus stability (unknown cause). On the third day of treatment she was able to walk again, which was a very fun experience to be able to be apart of!

- Of course a week doesn't go by without some frustration over the african culture. This week I was asked to treat a child with CP. When I went to see him I was shocked by the sight! The child was so skinny, he looked like a three year old made of only skin and bones, so spastic he was shaped as a ball (he was thirteen). When I asked what was going on I was explained that the mother was tired of taking care of him, so she had stopped feeding him... And of course, it is the family's responsibility to take care of the patients, so the hospital has no responsibility for this child at all, except giving him physio?

- Opening ceremony of the new water tank. With speeches, sodas, goat and cake, very festive!

 
























- Shandell

Fest og kalas er altid stas!

I går (søndag 20.01) var jeg og en gjeng andre mzunguer i send off, som er brudens avskjedsfest for sin familie. Jeg kjente vel egentlig ikke verken brud eller brudgom, men de ble likevel veldig glad for at vi kunne komme! Etter at alle gjestene var blitt introdusert (ca 200 stk), fikk vi servert både korsang, mat, dans og sprell. Utrolig kjekt å være med på, og tar gjerne turen ved en annen anledning.

Opplegget for festen skal visstnok være ganske likt for både bryllup, send off & begravelse.... Ganske praktisk egentlig :)

Veldig viktig å ikkje smile når du har send off, for det betyr at du er glad for å forlate familien!

Mama Haydom. Ikkje sikker kor gammel hun er, men da jeg spurte fikk jeg som svar: "Vet ikke helt, men hun har bare én tann".

Festlokalet

Fest og dans hørre med i Tanzania!

Kidza :)

Brud og brudgom. God gang!

- Henrik

All work no play?

Thank goodness no!!

We had a good week. It is so much fun getting to know the patients better. Entering the rooms all we meet is smiles and welcomes, and it takes this experience to another level! We even tried group therapy in the women's room this week, and it was very successful! They are almost all in traction, so we did an upper body workout together. 

Tomorrow we are supposed to change wards from surgical 2 to lena word (children's ward). So it'll be interesting to see if it works out. I hope it does, because I have really been looking forward to working with the children! 

But now it's a week-end. And of course we have to take some advantage of the beautiful weather! 

- Shandell

Marked

Her kjeme ein bildeoppdate fra gårsdagens marked på Haydom! Lite å lesa, mær å se ;)

Tøff.com                                                Viktig å skaffa seg masaiteppe, så sklir du rett inn!

Burak virka fornøyd med teppe sitt...

Ikke verst ka ein får te med ett bildekk og ein kniv

Mmm... fisk

Det lokale frukt & grønt markedet

- Henrik

Surgical 2

(This post was written on Saturday, but was postponed because of the need of photos)

Our first week of practical came and went. And we are sitting here with many impressions to process during our free time this weekend. 

First of all you have to understand that this is in the middle of rural Tanzania, it has to be VERY serious even to consider taking the long travel into the hospital. When it’s finally serious enough to go to the hospital, they have a journey that might take several days, ahead of them. So by the time they’ve reached the hospital... it is a catastrophe. 

Henrik and I have both been in the ward called surgical 2 this week. The patient’s problems vary a bit, but the thought is that the patients in this ward are supposed to have had went through surgical procedures, or are waiting for their operations. The reasoning for many of the patients problems are repeated in several cases. For instance: fell out of a tree, got kicked by a cow, was beaten (axe, machete, husband, mother in law) or run over by car. The main group of patients have fractures, and here they use traction to treat them, which means they might be laying in the same bed, not being able to move for three months. So our job is to mobilize the patients joints as well as possible, and apply active movements with resistance for whichever body parts aren’t in traction as much as we can. 

(a traction device for a femur fracture, at the end of the rope are weights to pull the leg)

Whether traction is the best option for treatment is a whole different story. It is a huge risk to create open wounds here, because of infection. And a traction device needs to be thoroughly cleaned often. You might ask: why should this be a problem? Well, then we are moving over to the issue of African culture, which is a whole different chapter.

We have been learning Swahili phrases to help us with our physio practise (because the patients here most definitely do not speak English), so by the end of this week both Henrik and I felt that we were able to complete treatment without having to constantly ask for help. Which was a GOOD feeling. 

(Family members + Henrik. It is the family member's duty to feed, wash and clean the patients. So if you don't have any family around you'll have a big problem)

One of the strangest things I saw this week was an open fracture. The patients Tibia and Fibula were completely fractured, it was an open wound, so we literally saw the bones stick up in the air. Which means the only thing attaching his foot to the rest of his body was soft tissue, posterior. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen!! And even crazier when the patient was still able to plantar flex his toes... After the doctor removed his dressing so the wound and fracture were completely open, he disappeared... So I was given the task to keep the flyes away from the wound while my mentor went to look for a nurse to dress it again. I wasn’t sure if I should cry or laugh, so I simply stood and waved the flyes away instead. 

It would be typical to write about the challenges of working as a physio therapist in an African hospital. And typically I would say “African time”, all the waiting. But personally it doesn’t feel like waiting, because we are constantly busy. It’s more that we have to spend our time doing other things, like looking for a wheelchair to transport a patient, or find food for the patients so that they’ll be able to exercise. So we spend our time doing other tasks, that shouldn’t be necessary, or should be somebody else's responsibility, instead of doing physio therapy. 

I hope you have gotten a slight impression of how our first week was!

- Shandell 

Outreach

Fredag var vi på "outreach" sammen med flere av sykepleierne på Haydom. Outreach er ett av Haydoms hjertebarn, og går ut på å tilby gratis helsetjenester for mødre og barn som ikke kan komme seg til sykehuset (enten via fly eller landcruiser). Noen av tilbudene som ble gitt er:

- Vaksinasjon av babyer (messlinger, polio/DTP, meningokokk, vitamin A m.m.)

- Veiing og registrering av babyer, ala 1 års kontroll

- Sjekk av gravide

- Undervising og testing av HIV & AIDS

Det var utrolig kjekt og få være med på og ikke minst veldig givende arbeid. Fikk til og med sette vaksine på babyer, etter en kjapp introduksjon :P

Må regne med litt motorhavari når en er ute i bushen. Spesielt når sjåføren kjører som en alke.

Veiing av babyer

Undervising om vaksiner

Ca 350 barn kom for behandling, så det var mye å gjøre!

- Henrik

Evening of January 10th

Aerobics @ Haydom

Hardcore aerobic, CHRISC, 1700 moh, 1 gutt & 7 damer.... say no more:

The Crib

Her komme litt bilder fra casa Haydom!

Det viktigste først: dassen...

Dobbelssenga mi :) Virkelig over all forventning!

Fellesstua. Trehvit er virkelig på moten i Tanzania btw.

                                                                       Kjøkken

Vår FANTASTISKE hushjelp Maggie som lager ferskt brød!

Ellers har jeg lært at:

- Å arbeide på et sykehus i Tanzania = VM i venting

- Åpne brudd = ikke bra

- Umebendeza nywele zako = "Du er fin på håret"

- 1 banan = 1,-

- Handshake i afrika = kule greier!

- Henrik