Tuesday: The day started at 8am with morning prayer. Morning prayer consists of a song of praise and a prayer in Sesotho (the native language). The song was quite beautiful and relatively simple to pick up, or at least imitate, even though I had no idea what I was singing.
Dr. Rajni, one of the Baylor doctors, gave Erika and I a tour of the clinic. The exam rooms, treatment room, and the pharmacy are downstairs and the offices are upstairs. We were also shown the Visiting Scholars room where we would be able to get internet, either on one of the computers there or on our laptops. Unfortunately, the Cottage is a little too far from the clinic to receive the wireless (my roommates and I have taken to sitting outside the clinic to use the internet after-hours, but it gets dark around 5pm here and it’s freezing cold!). After the tour, Dr. Rajni suggested we shadow the doctors for a couple of days so that we could get a hang of how the clinic operates. I spent the rest of the morning shadowing Dr. Lilian.
The doctors see around 150 patients a day, most of which are scheduled appointments, though they do take walk-ins and sometimes also see the family of the children. The patients begin arriving around 6am (or even earlier) and get a number. The children either wait in the waiting room or go outside to play in the playground. When their numbers are called, they follow the doctors to the exam rooms. In the exam room, there is usually one doctor and one translator (because most of the patients don’t speak English). Baylor uses a computerized charting system called EMR, but the doctors also writes everything in a booklet the patients carry with them that contains all their medical information (called the Bukana). In a typical visit, the doctor reviews the patient’s file, assesses their malnutrition status (weight against height), calculates their medication adherence, and prescribes new medication. All of the patients seen at Baylor either have HIV or have been “exposed,” meaning their mother has HIV and/or they are still being breast-fed. Children are seen until they are 18 if they’re positive for HIV or until PCR tests confirm their negative status.
In the afternoon, one of the Baylor drivers took me to Vodacom to get my cell phone on his way to deliver blood samples for testing at the hospital. Yay!
Wednesday: Today, Erika and I met with Dr. Teresa, a Baylor doctor who has been in Lesotho for 3 years, about project ideas. Dr. Teresa suggested that we help out with Teen Club, a once-a-month day camp that serves as a support group for the teens. She wanted us to make sure all registered Teen Club members had both a consent form and a name tag. Also, she wanted us to make notecards for each child containing their medical information as well as Teen Club information. This will be a pretty big project and we hope to work on it over the next month. I’m excited to work with the kids!
I spent the afternoon shadowing Dr. Rajni. Dr. Rajni is one of the friendliest doctors at Baylor (which is saying something considering how friendly everyone is!). She made sure to explain everything she did to me and even let me help her type in the EMR when I offered to help. I felt like a real doctor typing in the diagnoses and prescriptions and things! I even learned some medical shorthands. 🙂
Thursday: Erika’s dad, Dr. Versalovic (the head of pathology at Texas Children’s Hospital), is in Lesotho for the week, meeting doctors and giving lectures. Dr. Mohapi and Dr. Pii were taking Dr. Versalovic and Erika up to the mountains today and kindly invited me to join them. The drive there was gorgeous! The mountains in Lesotho are truly beautiful. However, our trip turned into somewhat of an adventure when it started snowing about three-quarters of the way there. Dr. Mohapi kept telling us how fortunate it was that Dr. Pii was driving because he was the best driver at the clinic, especially in the mountains. At first, the snow was novel and cool and we didn’t think it was a big deal. However, as we kept going up the mountain, we encountered several cars struck on the side of the winding roads. When a Kombi came sliding down the road at us (thankfully, it didn’t hit us), Dr. Pii finally said that we should turn around; even though we could’ve probably made it there, we wouldn’t have been able to come back. After turning around and switching to 4-wheel drive, we slowly and painstakingly made out way back down the mountain. Although there were definitely some moments there that had all of us a little nervous, Dr. Pii handled the car superbly and we all got back to town safely.
After our mini-adventure in the now, we had lunch at The Regal in Maseru. It is an Indian restaurant and is known to be one of the best (if not the best) in town. Erika and I had dinner there the previous night with three of the other visiting scholars (Lorine, Kim, and David). When Erika mentioned how amazing the food was, Dr. Mohapi suggested that we go there again for lunch. The food there was definitely good enough that we didn’t mind going, even though we would’ve had it for two meals in a row.
That evening, Dr. Versalovic gave a lecture on pathology at the clinic. It was a great lecture and I definitely learned a lot about all the relevant infectious diseases in Lesotho, including HIV, HPV, TB, and many others. Pathology is really interesting and Dr. Versalovic had a great story about how he decided to specialize in pathology that he told us over lunch (actually, both Dr. Mohapi and Dr. Pii had great stories about how they got to where they are now). Maybe I’ll relate those stories at a later time.