Let me rephrase that question, How important is great, prompt medical care to you? If there are no Doctors in the villages, there must be quacks. Someone's got to take care of the sick.
Nature abhors vacuums.
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Chapter 1: She carries a bag for feces.
Episode 4: The Plea This is the mother of our dear special patient whom we hitherto thought, or got the history, that was an orphan, it turns out it was her mother-Inlaw that was late and her biological father. He died a week before she came down with the illness. Her cost of medical care for the two surgeries with drugs, admission fee, nursing care and everything came up to N245k. As is my custom, and I am glad the people I work with understand and let me express myself, I save lives before I ask for payment. Continued from yesterday. SHE CARRIES A BAG FOR FEACES.
EPISODE 2 ( nothing happened, that phrase was just to keep you curious and anticipate this part of the story😁) In the theatre, all was ready. We had our suction machine which kept acting up, the drain was made out of a catheter tube and because they had no donor for blood, I had to donate mine, a rare privilege for me. We scrubbed and donned, like space travellers who were set for a journey. We prayed and after she had been cleaned and draped, we began the procedure. On opening the abdomen, pus alongside fecal matter poured out, we suctioned quite a quantity. We proceeded to find the perforation and luckily found it amidst a coiled up intestine matted together. Carefully and diligently we separated them until we reached it. We repaired, irrigated properly, passed the drain and closed up. She was wheeled to the recovery room and after some hours, to the ward. She was stable. The drain kept being active for a while. The weather was debilitating on this very bright windless, hot, sunny afternoon. The sky was clear with very occasional scudding of lightly gathered clouds. I was in the office rummaging through my drawers for a piece of paper, when I suddenly heard the wailing of a woman, the voice must have been that of one, no doubt. She had brought herself to the facility and as is custom, the nurses swung into action. I didn't budge. It's a normal thing if you are a doctor especially.
Five minutes later she was somewhat calm, I was called upon and vitals shown to me. She had had a severe abdominal pain 4 days prior to presentation and treated herself for "typhoid and malaria" at some chemist but the pain persisted, she vomited and after the second day she noticed her stomach swelling and pain became unbearable. How she managed the third and fourth day she couldn't explain. JUTH was my "nursing" mother, my Alma mater. About 3 days ago I received news of her first successful assisted reproductive technology that birth 3 healthy neonates.
This is a thing of joy because this has opened a new Vista of hope for the average income earner battling with infertility issues. Africa is wired in such a way that after marriage, couples are by defect expected to have the fruit of the womb within 2 years, failure of which draws inquisition that can range from mild to severe. Women, most times, bear this brunt sadly. As covid gradually finds space to settle within us quite forcefully, we must find a way to accommodate her. Life must go on. Science has evolved and new groundbreaking discoveries are replete in several fields. Medicine isn't left out. The AstraZeneca vaccine, like all other vaccines, is meant to help curtail the spread of the virus and keep guard against severe forms of the disease.
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