Kijabe Hospital

One of the exam rooms. There are

no x-ray viewers in the rooms, so

we have to hold the x-rays up to

the window to look at them!!

Going to work!

Dr. Mang'oli, Dr. Nduku, and Dr. Teddy

Some of you might be wondering what Dad does all day at the hospital! I was, so I was excited to be able to shadow him these last two Wednesdays. Wednesdays are clinic days, which means he sees patients who might need surgery, or are follow-ups from surgeries, or are just having some sort of joint pain; basically just non-emergency orthopaedic problems. We started at about 9 am, were given a chart (they call them files) of a patient, and led into a little exam room. Then begins the fun part - figuring out why exactly they are here. I say the "fun" part because sometimes its a bit of a puzzle, what with the language barrier and different terminology. They even have a different name for the operating room -- they call it the theatre! Yesterday, we had a sweet nursing student named Jackie who helped us and translated for us! We saw a lot of injuries that were related to motor vehicle accidents. One little boy had broken the cast (they call it a plaster) on his leg, despite their constant effort to make the casts as thick as possible so that this won't happen! One of the patients we saw this Wednesday was a 105 year old lady! She had broken her hip, but before that had been still working in the shamba (garden) and doing great! At about 10:30, everyone takes a little chai break, and has chai (very sweet, milky tea) and chapatis (yummy soft tortilla shaped bread). There are several other Kenya orthopaedic surgeons there, who are all very knowledgeable and kind. On the other days of the week, Dad does surgeries with them.

The 105 year old lady!

In the "theatre"

Abby and Jackie - what would we have

done without her translating for us?!