Today I went on morning rounds with the doctors, but I was the only intern on rounds! Like I’ve said before, there are 3 American doctors, and 2 Congolese doctors and the Congolese doctors are in training. So on rounds I went with ALL of them! It was awesome being the only intern with them because I got to ask so many questions and they were really willing to explain stuff well to me even if I didn’t ask about it! There seems to be an illness of the day pattern when we go on rounds. Some days it feels like literally every patient has malaria (which they usually do even if they didn’t primarily come to the hospital because of it), some days its all motorcycle accidents, some days it feels like a million babies just popped up. The pattern for this morning was reproductive organs. And let me tell you, going on rounds with 5 male doctors for this pattern was hilarious and slightly uncomfortable. They must have asked, “does the body walk” (can you still have an erection?) at least 5 times to different patients such as those with prostate pain, back injuries, STIs, and more. The most hilarious part of it all though was that I was having this translated to me by Dr. Wegner, which just made everything 10 times funny because he is just a goof. He is just like my dad, and if you know my dad at all you know exactly what a conversation with Dr. Wegner would be like.  

Today the little baby that Priscilla and I have been taking care of for the week went home. The parents decided that it wasn’t worth paying the money to have a surgery done on him, so they took the baby home to die there. It was really sad and we were both upset to see them walk away with such a precious infant. Medical care is hard in so many different ways here. I have noticed that it is especially hard for children here. They honestly don’t receive very much attention from adults in any way. When I was working in maternity, the mother often didn’t really care to see the baby after she had delivered it. Most of the time the baby was just left in a little bed away from the mother and the mother would just roll on her side and fall asleep for hours. Dr. Harvey told us that when a kid is old enough to fend for itself (so like 4), the parents pretty much give up all responsibility they have for the child. Often the child has to find its own food, which ends up being 1 meal a day if they are lucky! This is why children here are so malnourished and come into the hospital completely comatose or severely anemic. I might just be drawing enormous conclusions, but it seems like the children here are not only interested in spending time with us “mundelis” because we are different and usually have money, but because we think they are adorable and give them lots of attention that they don’t receive elsewhere. They giggle and scream at us to take pictures of them because they know we will and we love to!

Tonight we are watching a movie at the Wegner’s house and eating dinner, I get to pick the movie because it is my 21^st birthday tomorrow! Goodnight!

Random fact: Congolese people do not smile when they take pictures unless you insist they do. Priscilla and I wanted Dr. Noah to smile today, and he felt like he didn’t know how to, so bellow is a picture proving that and then a sequence of pictures showing Dr. Noah’s smiling attempts.

Also there is a picture of Sarah Beth Harvey, she bought a monkey for a pet the day before she was leaving to go home to New York. She is such goof ball, but the monkey was so so cute!