I really don’t know where to begin for this clinic! It started with arriving to a long lineup and ended with seeing 814 patients. Kedohi is a very impoverished community evident by the pictures of the latrines at the schools. We had a lot of sick children come in. As I was triaging I was brought a six year old who had extensive facial swelling (see pic) to the point he could barely open his eyes. I initially thought he was an allergic reaction but his abdomen was swollen. Although it is difficult to obtain a history even with translation, the mother indicted he had swelling in the lower extremities a few years before. The clinical officer felt he had kidney failure which of course would need to be diagnosed through bloodwork and an ultrasound which the mother could not afford. As parents, we can all relate to how this would be – the inability to provide healthcare for your seriously ill child is unthinkable. We sent the child to the hospital where he has had bloodwork and will have an ultrasound tomorrow. In the meantime, another child was brought in that had fainted in the playground. We thought it was just because of poor fluid intake and the heat. Although the child’s temperature was not elevated, he started having rigors (shakes) and vomiting. The clinical officer suspected acute malaria and considering we could not send the child back to the school, we sent him for assessment at the hospital. We used a lot of dextrose today, which we bring for patients to swallow when they are very ill. Priscilla triaged an infant who was quite lethargic from diarrhea and the dextrose perked him up, similar to us starting an IV at home. Now keep in mind this was only 10:30 and we had a long lineup, 25 children from another school for wound care, and medications that we had to pick up in Kisumu! Thank God for Gail’s organizations skills from 6 years of experience with this, I took the child to the hospital, dropped him off with our community worker who was already there with the renal failure child, and proceeded on to Kisumu to pick up our medications! Luckily we had already dewormed the school but unfortunately we were not able to provide sexual health today. On the other hand, the next two schools are also very high needs so we will be able to provide them with more pads! We also felt very fortunate to discover the wooden toy cars made by Stephen and Tim were in the second suitcase so many of the less sick children were zooming around with them amongst the crowd. Thank you Stephen and Tim for that diversion! Two more days to go – it’s hard to believe.
This makes me feel so grateful for our health care in Canada and wish everyone would appreciate it. This families must go through so much daily we wouldn’t in a life time…