Last week there was one day where the hospital room was
completely empty. The cleaning ladies cleaned the room and it finally smelled
good. That didn't last long though, as the next day, we got more sick people.
Since then, we have been getting people in and the hospital beds have all been
full most of the time. We even had to run one expecting mom up to Basis to the
hospital there because we were so full that we couldn't fit any more people in
the hospital beds! There was the mom with really bad edema in her legs, then
there was the mother of twins who had eclampsia and experienced seizures. There
was also the lady that came in this morning with high blood pressure also who
could not walk because she was so weak, and there was the guy that came in on a
stretcher that needed an iv. And last but not the least, the teenage boy with
the infected head is staying at the clinic for a while yet.
For a few of the nurses, the past couple of nights have
consisted of going to bed with the alarm set for an hour, then getting up,
going to check on people in the hospital room and making sure they took their
meds, then finally crawling back into bed for 5 more hours of sleep before they
need to be up again and ready for the next clinic day. So you can imagine what
it looked like today: nurses with eyelids at half mast trying to keep a
cheerful look on their face and a positive attitude even with a flu bug going
around. Thankfully, all the people we have in the hospital room now are all stable
and not looking too bad so hopefully we won’t lose any more sleep over them
during the night.
