Day 2

This morning I woke up at 645 and while waiting for the shower water heater to warm up made some coffee and avocado toast. Last year I hated “showering” because you had to basically just sit in the tub and splash water over yourself with a hand-held sprayer.  Not very effective for rinsing shampoo from the hair!  So when I got to our apartment, I was thrilled to see Emily had rigged up a “shower head” with that sprayer, a broomstick, and some twine.  It worked beautifully this morning and it was good to feel clean!  I went to lecture, followed by rounds, followed by more rounds.  No surprises here, but I saw two things immediately that I’ve never seen back home: HSV vasculitis with ischemic strokes (inflammation of blood vessels in the brain from herpes resulting in strokes), and a poor woman with frankly hemorrhagic ascites (she has cancer in her belly making fluid and bleeding which accumulates in the belly to make her look pregnant. 

The new third year medical students have started wards and were just as fresh/scared as UVAs third year students.  I went over a few things with them on rounds and then got recruited to teach a chest X-ray conference tomorrow.  After rounds (about 8 hours since I had eaten breakfast …) I headed to the hospital canteen with my research buddy, Amir, to plan our project over ground nut stew and rice. 

Unfortunately (fortunately?) there were no patients with sepsis at the hospital today to enroll in our study, so I took the afternoon to do some much needed tasks.  This included walking downtown about a mile to get a new SIM card for my iPhone to make it a Ugandan phone.  UVA is piloting a GPS-like app that tracks me wherever I go in Uganda in case of terrorism, etc.  It’s a little odd knowing you’re being watched, but it makes my mom feel better – so that’s good I guess!  And, of course, no trip to “town” would be complete without going to the farmers market.   Even though it’s not passion fruit season, I was able to score a few anyway, and left with more than I really came for (which is usually what happens at the C’ville market too).  I walked home amidst friendly calls of “hey muzungu!” and came home to make some spaghetti sauce from my market produce.  We are currently cooking on a gas tank with a flame, so I burnt the onions in the sauce, but it was still pretty decent!

Now after catching up on some work email and life tasks, I think it’s about time for bed!