February 9th

I went down to the hospital this morning about 8 or so to join
Laura on rounds. Emily does the pediatric ward, so I’m not really
chomping at the bit to go on rounds with her considering my
love/hate relationship with that ward. Rounds went pretty good
albeit a little slow, the medical students are very thorough, which
is good, but when trying to see over 40 patients that means it
takes a while. We made it to men’s ward and saw most of the
cases before I had to leave to get ready for school. Since they
hadn’t even gone back over the wards with Tom and Karen was
still down at the hospital I just grabbed a couple of snacks for
lunch. Classes went ok. I’m still struggling with the SS 3s, they are
the ones who need the most work and the ones seemed the least
interested in learning. Part of their problem is their study habits,
staying up all night and then only sleeping maybe a few hours a
day so when they come to me at or near the end of the day they
are too mentally fatigued to do anything. I’ve tried and tried to
convince them that this won’t work, to no avail. The others are
doing better at least. We are still making progress a little bit at a
time. After I got home from classes I got to listen to Emily and
Laura go over some of the common intestinal parasites here,
going over transmission, symptoms and treatment. It was
interesting to hear but before Tom allowed me to listen he made
me promise one thing, that I wouldn’t immediately decide that I
had any or all of them, haha. I told him that I am the type of person
who watches a drug commercial and after hearing the symptoms
thinks I have what it treats. A bit silly, I know and I don’t really think
I have it, just a first thought before I discount it. After that I spent
most of the evening relaxing. The weather here is killing me. Not
that it’s really that hot, but the temperature will drop (relatively)
low and then spike back up and I guess it’s not making my body very
happy because I haven’t had much energy lately. On the bright side
I am getting a lot of reading done, which I love so it’s not too
horrible. Nothing else much is really going on.

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks