Work?

By graylk23

Moved into my bure. I’m finally on my own, besides my rat & spider roommates.  My first night I was tucked in tightly to my mosquito net and was restless with suspicion.  Bear was too afraid to come out of my bag.  We were both freaked out when I discovered that a rat chewed through all of the pretty blue containers I bought in town.  My nutella was even tampered with, but thankfully it was spared.  That potentially would have been a mental break down.  I’ve been consuming a lot of peanut butter and nutella.  My bread only lasted 4 days before it started to go moldy, but the nutella was able to mask some of the sour taste.  Most nights I eat eggplant and rice.  I still go over to the Tks house to have meals.  I attempted to make pasta and garlic bread for them one night.  It was far from the satisfaction of Italy, but we enjoyed it.  In Fiji its not about quality, its about quantity.  It was a nice break from the routine foods and consumption theory.

Once I return for Labasa I’m going to finish my garden.  I look forward to the day I can stroll out of my bure in a sulu to grab some fresh fruit & veggies.  I’ve been in Labasa since Wednesday for a TB workshop.  It wasn’t the most beneficial workshop for me, because it went over a lot of practical information.  Like how to properly take samples.  I think its good to show my interest, and we get free food 🙂 I’ve been staying at Jess, Sarah, & Tim’s place, and I’ll be returning to my village tomorrow.  Back to the grind!  Some of you may be wondering, “Hey what exactly is her job?”  Well, these are some of the Ministry of Health goals we are trying to obtain:

  • Reduced burden of non-communicable diseases
  • Improve family and child health and reduced maternal morbidity and mortality
  • Improve environmental health through safe water and sanitation

And what does that entail?  Great question.  I’m still trying to figure it out.  I’ve traveled to two different villages to give a lesson about NCD’s with Oliti, who is one of the zone nurses at my health center.  While we were there we checked their health status.  I recorded their weight and height, and Oliti noted their blood pressure and blood glucose levels.  That was my workday for two days out of three weeks.  The rest of the time I sit in the health center and observe.  Lately I’ve been reading and doing the exercises in the “Culture Matters,” textbook that the PC gave us.  My schedule is for 8am-4:30pm, but I get a tea break 8-9 and lunch 1-2.  The day is nicely broken up, but still feels endless.  I think I’m going to start staying in the village on Thursday and Fridays to integrate more.

On Monday I prepared a session on oral health for children to present to the women while they waited to be seen by the nurse.  I was nervous.  My poster was basically all in Fijian and I had not done a presentation in front of my supervisor yet.  When I arrived I was happy to see that there was only one woman waiting for the nurse.  Eventually more women trickled in and I was about to begin when a truck came speeding up to the health center.  I cracked a bad joke about how fast he was going and they said they had a patient.  The NP (nurse practitioner) just left the health center to go shower and eat because she had been with a patient all night.  The doors of the truck flew open and they grabbed the small unconscious man and rushed him inside.  They laid him down on the table and the chaos in the room began.  The room was full of young men and children standing in the door.  Oliti fumbled with the oxygen tank and the panic in her eyes was unnerving.  She gave up on the machine for the time and went over to the patient.  Her hands placed on the top of his chest and another pair of hands were placed slightly lower.  They both began to do compressions.  If you’ve never been CPR certified I think most of you reading this would realize this is wrong, very wrong.  Another frantic individual was slapping his face calling his name to wake up, while two other people tried to find a pulse on his wrist using their thumbs.  I stood there, frozen in the heat of the commotion.  I hate to admit it, but one of the first thoughts was, “Am I allowed to step in?”  It’s against PC policy to have direct contact with a patient.  I began to give instructions, not to use your thumb, instead your index and middle finger.  The nurse removed her hands and went back to figuring out the oxygen tank.  I attempted to direct the individual giving compressions, but I ended up taking over.  I’m not sure how many cycles I did.  At one point I noticed that the NP had returned and she was checking for a pulse.  I asked if there was one and I received no response.  I kept going.  “Should I stop?”  No answer.  I walked away.

The room had a chill quiet.  Then the young men began to cry, the nurse & np shed a tear.  My emotions began to catch up to the pace of the situation, and I stepped out of the building to cry.  What happened?  Turns out this 31 year old man is a known asthmatic and he suffered an attack last month where he almost “kicked the bucket.”  They told him to quit smoking and drinking grog.  He was experiencing shortness of breath this morning and his inhaler ran out.  The woman that was at the health center at 8am was his mother.  She was on her way back to give him his medication when he was being rushed to the health center.  The NP came out to call the hospital in Savusavu to have someone retrieve the body and said, “Don’t cry Katherine.  We did everything we could have.”  That scares me that she believes that, and that comment sparked some more anger in me.  I was upset that I had to be the one that decided to stop and let him die.  I was upset that this man died so young of something so curable.  And I was waiting for a religious remark.  As I walked home in a daze the chief said, “Did you hear about the boy that died.” Me- “Yes.  Its so sad.” The chief cracked up laughing, “Gods way!”  I guess it’s his way of dealing.  Culturally the Fijians, with their beaming smiles ironically suppress a lot of their emotions and feelings.

It felt inappropriate teaching about brushing your teeth the following day.  The one nurse asked, “What do you think we could have done better.”  I collected my words, “I think we should go over CPR.”  She agrees, and I’m happy that she feels comfortable and respects me to ask my opinion.  Tim knows the director of the American Red Cross.  I’m going to give him a call tomorrow to set up something so that the health center and hopefully the villagers can be trained as well.

Next time I’ll be able to check in will probably be 21st, which is the end of the world party in Labasa.  I’m going to wear an aluminum foil hat, and so will bear.  I even though the world is painfully broken I hope it doesn’t “end”.

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