Greys Hospital

Things have been slowing down quite a bit over the last couple weeks here in Pietermaritzburg. We had our last nursing lecture on Friday, so all we have left is our senior seminar paper (the big paper every senior at APU has to write before graduating), a community nursing final exam (on the Saturday before Easter- how horrible is that?!), and two presentations. I've been working on my senior sem paper all day, so I'm taking a short break from it right now to post this.

The non-nursing students have been going to their service sites for the past 3 weeks. They go out pretty much every day of the week, from 8:30am to 4:00pm. Since we nursing students are done with clinicals, we get to stay here at AE. It's a strange reversal- instead of nursing going out to clinicals while everyone else stays at AE, now nursing are the only ones here. It gets kind of lonely during the day with only 6 people here instead of 53!

This past week has been pretty fun. On Wednesday, our nursing professors took us to the nearest hospital, Greys Hospital.

It's considered a specialty hospital, so you only go there if a doctor has referred you to see a specialist.

It's not much different than the hospitals in the US.

The nurses dress quite differently, though. They don't wear scrubs like we do. Instad, they wear white dresses and white hats, just like nurses used to a long time ago! We definitely stuck out in our blue scrubs, just like we do anywhere we go.

It's a pretty big hospital, but even so, most of the rooms are 6 beds to a room! I couldn't believe it! That was one big difference from the US, where even 3 in a room is very uncommon.

The highlight of the trip was going to the Neonatal ICU. There was a doctor there who was teaching medical students, and he gladly let us join them. They were trying to diagnose a 4-day-old baby who was born at 34 weeks. He has a multitude of problems and deformities, but the biggest issue is that he doesn't have very much brain tissue. Most of his skull is full of fluid instead of brain.

It was sad to see him and know that if he survives, his life will be anything but normal. It made me wonder why God makes some babies like this, and some are born completely normal and healthy. But then he looked up at us with his adorable baby eyes, and I knew that God still has a purpose for his life. He gave me so much joy just from looking into his eyes! We stayed with him as long as we could, and we learned a ton from the doctor in the process. It was a really great moment that I won't forget for a long time.

Now I need to get back to writing my paper, so I'll post some more later on.

Word of the Day: "lalela" (la-lay-la) means "listen"