Karibu!
Being back at the hospital has been so fun! Yesterday, Cole and I got to spend time with Joshua in OPD and see how even the most general of chief complaints (cough, fever, nausea/vomiting) produces a vastly different list of ddx in Tanzania then in the US. We chatted a lot about the two different healthcare systems, what common diseases/cases we see, hobbies, traveling, etc. Questions like: How do you treat parasites? How you do treat psychosis? Emphasized the difference in our countries and available resources. We don't see parasites very often and if we do it's likely from travelers. I think we saw 3 patients yesterday that had hook worm and entamoeba. They diagnosed a 65 yr old female with depression and were unable to offer an SSRI or SSNRI or any type of therapy. However, we also discussed Jason Mamoa (who my mom loves), Kevin Hart, the Marvel super hero films and the tv show The Good Doctor - he loves American tv and movies. He also said if could travel anyway in the world he'd go to Canada. While in college in Duluth, me and my friends have joked many times about just trying to Canada for fun on a weekend. We're 8,000 miles away from home, everything seems so different but maybe it's a smaller world than we think? Maybe people, regardless of what country they live in, are more alike than we think?
Another familiarity for me here has been the agriculture. Growing up in a rural farming community I'm very accustomed to seeing acres of corn and soybeans along the roads. It's been comforting to see so many in/around Ilula and southern Tanzania. This afternoon Cole, Janet, and I decided to go on a walk around town. We've gone several times while here so Cole offered to take us down some trails and more rural roads behind the hospital. So, we followed and first found an...interesting (I saw gross, they say awesome) creature on the fence. We tried to make a big loop around to the hospital instead of an out and back hike. So, we took a left then continued on a path that got progressively narrower and narrower then all of sudden we were in a corn field. There was in fact not a road going the direction we thought there *should* be so naturally we continued trespassing through several other corn fields in hopes of finding this would be logical place for a road. All in all we laughed and embraced the road less traveled. Crops looked pretty good, rains been plentiful here. I supposed they can't really say "knee high by the fourth of July" since that's their dry season...nor would America's independence day be relevant for them...but that's what I kept thinking of when we walked through the knee high corn anyways I digress.,,ugali for everyone soon I'm sure!
We ended up walking an easy 6K or so in total and made it back safely to the hospital. Luckily, we made it back well before the intense rain & lightning too!
Of course no "opportunity to practice being flexible on this trip" could pass without a photo op.
Try to go on palliative care rounds!
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