Thursday was a very eventful day at the hospital! When we first arrived, one mom was in labor at 5 cm already and there were a few scheduled surgeries as well. First we hung around the labor ward, expecting the mom to quickly progress since it was her fourth child. We chatted with one of the nurses who explained exactly how they handle labor in St. Joseph's Hospital and although I was surprised about some of the tools they use or procedures they perform, generally it was very similar to in the US. One thing I did think was sort of funny was their way of finding a fetal heart rate while the woman is in labor. In America, we have fetal heart rate monitors that are strapped onto the mom's stomach for the duration of labor that alert us in case the baby's heart rate is too irregular. Here, although I think they do have an unused machine, the midwife uses a cone-like tool to press to the laboring mom's stomach, then puts her ear at the other end and she apparently can hear the baby's heart rate! I didn't give it a try, but one of the other girls on the trip did and said you can hear it although it's hard.
We waited around for a while, but by 11 the mom was still not ready so I went to observe a laporotomy. There was a patient in the maternity ward whose ultrasound showed a mass near the uterus, so the doctor decided to do an exploratory surgery to see what he could find. It was really cool to watch, they went in and pulled out the uterus, checking out the uterine tubes and ovaries which were extremely inflamed. The doctor said unfortunately it was likely the girl would be infertile in the future, even though she is only 16. They found the mass wasn't on the uterus at all; instead it was an abdominal mass, which they just drained of pus and then closed her up. It was relatively quick, lasting only an hour, leaving plenty of time, or so I thought, to check up on the laboring mom again. I got there around 12 and was told that she was 10 centimeters dilated, meaning her cervix was ready to have the baby, but the fetus still hadn't descended far enough and she was only having contractions every 15-20 minutes. I left for lunch, figuring I'd try to make it back as soon as possible, but when I came back a half hour later she was still in the same position. A few of us stayed for two more hours, and one poor girl in our group stayed until 7pm, but we found out on Friday the woman hadn't given birth until 10pm! I felt so bad for her being in labor for fifteen hours, but we were also glad we didn't try to stay for the whole time.
After dinner last night, we went for snacks and drinks at a restaurant that is built around a tree about ten minutes away from our house. Everyone in the group had gone there before except me and one of the couples here, so I was excited to finally try out some genuine Kenyan food. At the house we have a lot of chicken, rice, and beans, but nothing that is traditionally Kenyan. At the restaurant, we all got servings of ugali, chipati, and masala chips. Ugali is basically a mound of millet so it doesn't have much of a taste, but I still thought it was good, and chipati is like pita bread, which is always good. Masala chips are fries covered in some kind of spice-filled sauce mixture and they were SO good until my last bite, which contained a dense pack of spice. I literally have never tasted anything so spicy in my life and I could not get it to go away. I was crying for like twenty minutes and seriously thought I was going into anaphylactic shock. Needless to say, I'm gonna be a bit more skeptical before eating masala chips again, even though for most of the time they were really good.
On Friday the hospital was pretty low-key; two other girls and I spent two hours hanging around in maternity waiting for Dr. Agullo, the gynecologist, to come do rounds. Usually rounds start after our morning meetings, which end around 8:30, but by 10:00 Dr. Agullo still hadn't gotten there and he had a surgery to do. We ended up going to the surgery before rounds began, and then spent an hour waiting in the OR. The patient was a 36 year old woman undergoing a hysterectomy because she had cancer and masses covering her uterus. I started feeling not so hot, so I didn't stay for the entire procedure and really only got to see them open her up and start taking out her uterus. It gets really warm here during the day and there is no air conditioning in the ORs, so that combined with a headache was a little too much for me to be comfortable. Nothing else was going on in the hospital today, so I came back home, ate, and went to the market to stock up on snacks and for our safari this weekend! We leave at 6:00 AM tomorrow morning to leave since Maasai Mara is 6 hours away, and then we'll have a nighttime game drive. I have no idea what to expect and I'm hoping we get to see the big five (most dangerous animals) but apparently the reserve is huge (it's an extension of the Serengheti in Tanzania) so we just drive around for hours. Tonight, we're planning a relaxed and early night to prepare - the next blog should be filled with great pictures :)
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