South Africa: Travelling Outside My Southern Comfort Zone: A New Week With New Adventures!

Today was a new week and the start of a new ward. We divided into groups in which Sami, Sarah, and I were split among the groups, and I with Dani and Adelle. This week’s rounds will take place at the older hospital across town called Pelonomi. My group was placed in general adult surgery, though we spent about an hour and a half looking/waiting for our doctor. According to Dani, 3^rd year’s saying is “a year of being lost and confused mixed with hurry hurry wait.” After finding our doctors we split up again so that Dani and I had our own doctor. Once again, the doctor asked questions that Dani had possibly learned before, but chances are she wouldn’t be able to answer. We saw many patients with gastro problems where one man came in saying that he was trying to show off to the young people in the gym and somehow developed an umbilical hernia from it.

Tuesday we started in the ward and assisted a 4^th year take a patients history and complaints to present the patient to the doctor. The female patient mainly spoke Sotho so getting proper answers from her was pretty difficult. The 3^rd years were joking around the other day about their attempts at communicating with those who speak neither English nor Afrikaans saying they answer yes to everything. Do you have pain? Yes. For how long? Yes. Do you understand? Yes. The majority of sisters working in the hospitals speak Sotho so usually a translator is nearby, but not always. The patient had vascular problems (shocking, I know) and had developed venous ulcers on her lower right leg that were extremely painful. After the 4^th year had presented the patient, the doctor gave me another “We have to do a bypass on this patient, but the United States is rich and wasteful with money so they don’t have to resort to bypasses” speech. There is definitely resentment towards the US regarding such matters.

Following the presentation of the patient, we were assigned to draw blood from several patients. Since I am not allowed to do this, watching the 3^rd years practice drawing blood time after time has gotten pretty old. We finished our time at the hospital in the clinics, but were released early so we went to the Vryfees! This is basically a freedom festival (although the literal translation is “make-out festival”) that takes place on the campus of UFS every July. There are many food stands and stalls that sell an array of different products; so many stalls that it took me about 3 hours to visit each one. Very cool!