a day in the life

25 Feb 2012
When I told people I was going to be spending 2 months in Chad. The first question (once we got passed the “Where is Chad?” and “Why on earth would you want to go there?” type questions) was “what will you be doing there?” The answer was easy: an OB rotation and a public health project. And if Chad were the US that is exactly what would have happened. Of course, things here aren’t quite so easily teased apart, and so my daily life has been more a mix of both these things.

I’ve been here 4 weeks now. With only 4 weeks left to go, I’ve got that familiar sinking feeling that there just isn’t enough time. Theoretically, the first 4 weeks I’ve spent here were on an OB rotation and the next 4 weeks should be devoted to my public health project. It isn’t really going to work like that. There is no way that the public health project could possibly take up all of my time, and so I plan to keep working in the hospital as much as I can. Also, I spent at least 5 or 6 afternoons chasing after officials trying to get them to sign my paper work for Tufts so that I could actually do my public health project.

So what have I been doing here? My days have gone something like this:

Between 5:30 and 6am – I wake up for the first time. Roosters crowing, radios blaring, babies crying, the sound of the dirt on the compound being swept into artful semicircles.

6:45am – I wake up for real this time, get dressed and go out to get breakfast. Breakfast is most often Bouille – a rice porridge that I quite like. Recently, though, we have had a lot of spaghetti for breakfast. This is good too.

Around 7:30 – walk over to the hospital. It is a short walk, across paths that everyday seem to get sandier and sandier. I am told that as the hot season progresses the sand gets deeper and deeper, blown in from the Sahara to rest here in Bere.

Around 7:40am – arrive at the hospital. I change into my scrubs and catch the tail end of the morning prayer meeting, which as often as not seems to be about where patients are allowed to shower and use the bathroom. At the end of this, a line forms and everyone greets everyone else. It is a nice way to start the morning. Though, all the hand shaking makes me a bit nervous given that it isn’t immediately followed by hand washing.

8am - 3pm work day. Maternity rounds with the doc are usually around 9am. I try and round with the nurses when they do hand-off at 8am so I am sure I know the patients and the meds they are on. Often, I follow Danae into surgery rounds after OB rounds so I can see the patients I helped operate on – Danae particularly likes me to look at the incisions I have closed. Once you have seen a closure you did get infected because of the way you did it, you are not likely to make the same mistake again.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are the designated prenatal visit days, so those are guaranteed to be busy. Almost every day there are gyn surgeries that I get to scrub into (I think that if I can get 3-4 more in, I might be able to do a tubal ligation on my own!), and there are always interesting cases coming in that they almost always remember to call me to come and see.

Some days, depending on what is going on in the OR, I get a lunch break – for me this means fried dough and freshly ground peanut butter. I try and convince myself that the peanut butter is healthy and that I need the protein, but there is no way to make the beignet healthy.

The best days are when there is a lady in labor. This means that I will get to see a delivery, and might get to actually do a delivery.

3pm – 7pm often, if I like the nurse who is on, or if there is a lady in labor, I will stay for part of the afternoon shift, too. I help the nurse give out meds, start IVs and chat with the patients, trying to improve my nangere (the local language).

7pm – home again. I eat my dinner (always tomato salad covered in either oil or peanut sauce) and hang out with my family until I am too tired to keep my eyes open, then it is off to bed. I am almost always asleep by 9:30pm.

Somewhere in there I usually manage to spend some time reading and sometime working on my public health project.

In this way, the days pass quickly.