Week 1: And so it begins

Thus begins our rotations here in Lambaréné.  I am doing adult medicine, and the other American medical student (also a white girl named Elizabeth, to maximize confusion) is doing pediatrics.  This week so far I’ve been in the inpatient wards in the morning (rounding on 26 patients in as many minutes) and the clinic in the late morning and afternoon (today: 2:30 to 4:30, hardly the schedule we're used to keeping at home, though it is oppressively hot, effectively limiting how many hours one can actually work during the day).  On my current to-do list: 1. Learn French, 2. Learn medicine, 3. Learn to understand Gabonese French, 4. Learn names of medicines in French (Esidrex?? Never heard of it.  Oh, wait, it’s hydrochlorothiazide?  Riiiight, I have heard of that).  The doctor I was working with actually left to go get something yesterday and said, “Ok, you can see this next patient while I’m gone,” and I was like, ummmmmm thanksbutnothanks.   It takes me 10 minutes just to read the notes from their previous visit, because they’re all in illegible French with abbreviations I can’t figure out.  Oy.  Adventure!  (Ça va aller...at least I hope.) :)  

I’m already a little bummed out (for lack of a more eloquent phrase) by the sick people.  Not that sick people in the US don’t bum me out, because they do, but I’ve already seen a few people this week who are sick.  Like, I look at them and wonder how it is they’re even still alive.  I saw literally the most cachectic girl I have ever seen in my life yesterday.  She was 22 and weighed maybe 65 pounds.  Good lord.  AIDS is a scary thing.  She'd been sick for a year but hadn't come to the hospital until now.  I just think of millions of dollars being spent in the US chasing incidentalomas (translation for non-medical people: incidentalomas are little shadows and blips that are discovered incidentally on CT's and MRI's done for other things, and usually turn out to be absolutely nothing) and it makes me crazy.  

Ok, off to bed.  Under my recently re-strung mosquito netting.  Now hopefully it won't fall on my face in the middle of the night, causing me to brush it off my face in a panic cause my half-asleep brain is concerned it's an ant colony, or a hungry mosquito family, or a bat.  Or a spider the size of a yorkshire terrier that we calmly (ahem) removed from my roommate's room the other day.  (Picture to follow)