Wrapping up in Tamale

So I am realizing that I am not very good at keeping up with this whole blogging thing. Maybe I'm just not used to it, as I rarely journal at home. It's nice though to be able to reflect, as well as keep people back home updated on the happenings here in Ghana.

This week Jackie and I started out on the Labour and Delivery Ward at the Tamale Teaching Hospital. I was pretty nervous going in, as the incidence of major complications and even death (of both mother and child) is pretty high here. In the two days we were there we only got to witness one birth, but it was still an amazingly beautiful thing! The mother was a very small young woman, no older than 18 I'm sure. It is incredible how quiet the women are here during labor and birth. In the birth I assisted with at home the woman was swearing and screaming bloody murder! Such a drastic contrast. The people here are taught to be so strong and withstand immense pain and suffering. We worked with a Dutch midwife, Laura while in L&D and that birth was her first Ghanaian delivery. It was a pretty cool experience for all of us involved!

Wednesday we went to visit an orphage called the Children's Home. Jackie and I spent the morning playing with the babies and the toddlers while Jill and Kim had a crazy time chasing after and attempting to teach the school age children. The toddlers were all so affectionate and would often cry if you put them down. It was hard to leave them but it was nice to know that we were able to give them some much needed love and attention.

Thursday we spent our day on the pediatric ward which is completely packed. Family members stay with patients, when possible, and do all of the personal care. There were over 50 people (patients and family) in one large room, with some patients in cribs and some, usually the older children, on mattresses on the floor. Sooo different than back home! We spent most of our day looking after a young boy with enteric fever, malaria, and sickle cell anemia, with a fever of 40.2 degrees. We got to put our patient advocacy knowledge into practice when we fought to get him in for an apparently "totally booked up" ultrasound. He reminded me a lot of our patient we had on our very first day in hospital, who ended up dying overnight, so I think that's why Jackie and I took to him so strongly. We went to visit him the next day and thankfully he made it through the night and appeared a bit more stable.

We decided to end our time in the Tamale Teaching Hospital on a good note and spent Friday in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) where we got to hang out with premature babies. They were such amazing tiny little miracles. Can't believe that they even survived being out of the womb, let alone are still going strong. We got to bathe the babies and learned how to swaddle them up really nice and tight so they look like little packaged sausages! Too cute!

Today is our last day in Tamale, as tomorrow we head even further north to Bolgatanga (or Bolga, as it is usually referred to). The heat here in Tamale has started to wear on us as the temperature is starting to rise, and our power is cutting out more often, leaving us without our beloved ceiling fan. Bolga is supposed to be even hotter, so although I am very much looking forward a change, I am slightly dreading the looming heat that awaits us there!

Muriel, our professor, took over the kitchen at the guesthouse today and baked some of her magically delicious bread. She managed to find real butter (not the usual insanely hydrogenated stuff they have here that somehow manages to stay solid in 40 degree heat) and cheddar cheese at a store somewhere in town. I need to run as she has invited us all for a feast!

Hope everyone is doing well back home. How are the Olympics? I here there is a lack of snow. Hope it's not too much of a gong show!

Love from Ghana,
Kels