We went for our first general ward round this
morning, and found out that they've been
unusually quiet these few days. Well, all the
better to rest and make bilums! With Dr Manar and
her English accent here, and our return to
standing ward rounds, it's starting to feel like
we're in a hospital in England again (and I can't
help thinking about Kapuna's sit-down ward
rounds). Later in the day we found that an
incision and drainage that was scheduled to be
done was cancelled because the boil burst by
itself (…) and we were just going back to the
house when we met the daughter and son from the
Chinese family that runs the Jackson store
upriver, who'd asked us before to come over for
the daughter's birthday dinner – they'd come up
to walk us down to their house! So we got our
things in order and walked down with them, Ruth
and the two of them chatting away and me trying
my best to follow the flow of conversation.
They're a Teochew family from a village-town in
Guangdong province some 5 hours away from
Shenzhen/Hong Kong, and their extended family
have made their livelihood in PNG setting up
stores around Kikori. It was quite surreal
walking down from the hospital to their
store-cum-house while receiving all the open
stares from the darker-skinned people passing by,
and to know that I'm in PNG but be surrounded by
very Chinese-y things – from karaoke and TV
programmes (they have satellite TV) in Mandarin
and even Teochew, to tea in the little Chinese
teacups, to a proper Chinese meal, with homemade
shark's fin soup, homecooked Teochew dishes
(including delicacies like congealed pig's blood,
pig's liver and kidneys), and lots of rice. Ruth
and I were fed full to the brim, after a month of
not having proper Chinese food!
They're definitely a testament of how versatile
the Chinese are – they came here not knowing any
English or Pidgin and had to learn as they went
along when they got here, yet prospering in
whatever situation they're in. They take
discarded shark's fins, which the locals don't
have any use for, to dry to make shark's fin
soup; the mother makes tofu (hard and soft)
They're also very generous – they make friends
with all the "foreigners" who come, and are free
with gifts – Dr Manar and Dr Ovoi have been
invited in for Sunday lunch of the famous Teochew
porridge, or as he called it "water-rice", and
some hospital staff sometimes get free cans of
Coke when they pass or when they buy something
from the store. They were very generous to us too
– meat of both raw and tinned variety, canned
drinks, onions, tea-leaves, etc. Very pai-seh,
yet I think we're welcome company, especially for
the daughter who's about our age, and spends her
time here mainly in the shop. We're definitely
going back, to perhaps buy more things and chat
(at least Ruth will chat more than I will!) with them.
16/3/2009: Day 33, Kikori Hospital
I did my 2nd delivery today – a multipara whose
baby came slipping out in its sac and we ruptured
it just in time. That express delivery caused her
a tear though, so I got the chance to do some
suturing. Ruth got her primiparous delivery also,
after seeing her first in the day and waiting
till the night for her to deliver. Besides that,
the timetable has been relaxed enough for us to
feed ourselves well (the gas stove and the
well-stocked stores help!) and progress in leaps
and bounds in our bilum-making. The bilum is a
bag that they sew, using either wool
double-twined for strength, or any other rope.
The stitch used is common to the whole of PNG,
and is one of the very few things that is shared
among the PNG people. Even the bilum patterns are
different among the tribes, and years ago you
could have told people apart by the patterns on
their bilums. Besides bags, they stitch fishing
nets, baby carriers, and really anything that
will hold something. The patterns are very
eye-catching, especially in the bright colours they use.
Ruth and I started learning the art in Kapuna
during our 3rd week there, and regretted that we
didn't start sooner! There's a lot of work put
into one bilum – the rolling of the wool
together, stitching the mouth then the body then
the handle, learning the different stitches, and
that's not including learning how to do the
different patterns! Yet with our good and patient
teachers under the old dorm at Kapuna, and here
in Kikori, we've progressed (the extra time on
our hands helps a lot!). I'll be carrying my
bilum around from time to time, and I'm very
willing to pass the knowledge along!
18/3/2009: Day 35, Kikori Hospital
Two women were the focus of attention today. One,
probably younger than us, had been having
shortness of breath for the last few days –
pneumonia ? TB, with perhaps an element of
anaemia. She was transfused (with type O blood
from a very generous member of staff, whose blood
was siphoned off right next to her) with a unit
of blood and seemed to improve, but developed
jaundice and increasing shortness of breath
today, with a lot of pain. We did our best to
make her comfortable, but Ruth said to me, "I
think she's near death". We didn't expect her to
pass away this afternoon though, and receiving
the news when we were at the airstrip sending
Uncle John off was a bit of a shock. As we walked
around the hospital compound, we could her mother
and some relatives bemoaning her demise, a
sobering reminder of her life cut short and our
remaining questions about what really ailed her.
Meanwhile, we were also wondering about a
pregnant lady who had come in with slight pains.
At first the CHW had diagnosed a UTI, but as the
story unfolded bit by bit we found that she had
ruptured her membranes on Friday, 5 days before,
and the pains she was feeling were akin to labour
pains, though less severe and less often. Because
she had lost most of the amniotic fluid we had
trouble figuring out what that medium-sized hard
lump in her abdomen was at first, then because a
pregnancy test was strongly positive and fetal
heartbeat was strong, the trouble became figuring
out what happened, the lie and presentation of
the baby, and what to do next. What made it more
difficult was that there probably was an element
of IUGR (she was very thin), and she was a grand
multipara with a history of 2 neonatal deaths
before this one. 5 pairs of hands tried to
ascertain the baby's position, and with much
prodding and palpating we decided it was probably
a transverse lie (we were all certain that the
head was not in the pelvis!) and despite the
contraindications, external cephalic version was
tried and failed. She and baby were stable
though, so our plan was to keep her that way
until there was transport to transfer her to a better-equipped hospital.
One life gone, one more at the brink and could go
either way. The fight for life and against death goes on.
No comments:
Post a Comment