The Circus is in Town - Tuesday February 22, 2011

This was a much better day, with less severe heart-wrenching cases, but I did feel like the circus arrived due to the oddity of events. We saw 120 people in Dental, 200 in Vision, and 80 in Medical. We were so efficient we were able to see all of these patients by 4pm! This is the earliest the Medical clinic has ever closed with that multitude of patients. 

Tent for registration, public teaching and waiting

In vision, the Lion’s club has been here all week. They are based in Nairobi and have a clinic that travels all around Kenya with optometrists, ophthalmologists, nurses, and refractory technicians. We melded our clinics together, and have learned quite a bit from the lion’s club. The Canadian team in now in charge of reading testing and distribution of glasses, sunglasses, and hats. The Lion’s club screens for eye diseases and performs refractory (distance) testing. If someone has cataracts, they are selected during screening for surgery in Nairobi. The Lion’s club will pay for the surgery and 3 days of a hospital visit, and MCOH will only have to pay half of the travel costs! This is such a great partnership as previously, people with eye problems were told we couldn’t help them and given reading glasses. Now many people will be able to see again! Additionally, the Lion’s Club announced that based on the great need, clinics will continue in Mikinduri while we’re gone!



Bill and Shawna at work in Dental



In dental, Bill has had one Kenyan doctor consistently with him every day and sometimes more. Today three dental students arrived for the morning and were able to learn while helping the community. Bill sees about 30 people per day and each Kenyan doctor can see 50! It’s amazing to watch how quickly they work!

Today’s patients were from Kaguwru, the town we visited on Saturday. We have the patients come in on buses so that we are getting the most feeble and poorest, the ones that may not get to a clinic otherwise. It was very encouraging because while a handful of the children were malnourished, there were ten times more children last year that were severely malnourished. This shows great progress with the feeding program in Kaguwru!  Additionally, I saw my aunt’s sponsor child Isaiah that day. He had a benign issue, and looked fine in the morning. When I saw him around lunch, he was laying on the ground, looking completely miserable. I was about to be worried when I saw his mother laughing. Apparently he was very hungry! How fantastic is it that he is now not used to missing a meal! He left, got bananas, and brought me one. How sweet is that!?

Now onto the circus. The day started with a woman being carried in. She was apparently too weak to walk. We got her in, and it turns out she had a slight stomach ache and as soon as she saw the doctor, she pepped right up! How dramatic! Later, there was a father who tried to sneak his children in. I say sneak because many of the patients were pre-registered and his children appeared quite healthy. Since it’s hard to know though, I sent his teenage son with a mental disorder who had a stomach ache through. Later on, I walked into the medical clinic and saw 10 translators holding down the son who was screaming. It turns out he was coming down off of drugs. As I walked by, he reached out and grabbed my arm and I was now involved. Greg was able to calm him down and the three of us walked into the dressing room where the Kenyan doctor gave him an injection to calm him down. Quite a circus! He was later totted off to the hospital along with a sweet little baby who had meningitis.

That evening for dinner, there were 5 people missing. The flu that has been passed around took out 5 people for the night! Our team is so hardworking though, you would never know that people are not feeling well while working at the clinic, you just see it when they come home. They’re being taken care of though, with the fantastic soup at dinner and amazing nurses in the hotel. Luckily everyone has recovered.