Clinic Day 1 - Monday, February 14th 2011

Grania and Ken with a translator and patient in Vision

Clinics have finally arrived! I’ve been in Kenya for two weeks waiting for this exciting day! Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will be in Kengetta, a town about an hour from Mikinduri. Since it’s such a small town, we commute to it every day and stay in Mikinduri. Monday was a half day to get set up in the  morning and have a clinic in the afternoon for the elderly and children. The site is the Blessed Heart School, run by a group of nuns and sponsored by Chalice. We have a medical building which houses the medical, dental and pharmacy crews, and a school room for vision clinics.

A very happy patient!

In Vision, there was quite a large team. We had 60 patients, which is pretty good for a brand new team and in a 4 hour period! We love to help the elderly as they see such an obvious improvement with glasses.  

Adair, Adrian, and Marian were the nurses in Pediatrics. They saw 40 children over 4 hours, ages 2 - 17. There were malnourished children that were referred for sponsorship. A child that was having seizures once a week that could have been a number of things, and she will receive further treatment. They saw a twelve-year-old girl in a dilapidated wheel chair that was referred for sponsorship. The wheelchair pads were all gone, the tires were flat. She had clearly been using it for years and needed a new. She had cerebral palsy and thought the medication (Vitamin A and de-worming) was poisonous. She refused to take it, but they got her younger brother to take the medication first to prove it wasn’t. He wouldn’t leave her side. It was adorable! She was referred for physiotherapy. Adair wanted to add that in the morning people handed out suckers and gummi bears for Valentine’s Day, and lunch was decorated with hearts and pink spoons!

There were ten children sent for Malaria treatment and testing. There was a girl that was burned in a fire at 4 months old. She was six years old and was missing part of her nose, most of the skin on her face was scarred, and she had parts of her hair permanently burned off. They gave her and her sister a knitted doll and took her picture. Typically in Kenya, we immediately show the children their picture because many of them rarely get to see themselves on the camera. We hesitated showing her the picture, because her scars were so prominent, but the smile on her face was so huge when she saw what she looked like, that we knew that it was us that had the problem, not her.

There was a girl who had very big sweet eyes and complained of a headache. When asked more details, they found out that her head hurt in the afternoon and evening because she only got one meal per day. She was severely malnourished and was referred for sponsorship through Chalice. Her problems were so much bigger than a headache, but that’s what she found to complain about, not her hunger!

Oh and Rosa finally got her bag! She had been borrowing clothes since she arrived since the airlines left her bag in Charlottetown! What a Valentine’s treat!

We had a really big day and were excited to see so many patients! We had meetings in the evening discussing the day and finding ways we could refine the clinics to improve efficiency. At one point Ted slipped and asked about the ‘hypocritical oath’….ooops! He meant hypocratic! We’re looking forward to the next day of clinics.