3-21-2012

I was feeling quite sick this morning.

I slept through breakfast and woke up when everyone except Audra was going to the Day Care.

AFter I got up and ready and ate breakfast, Audra and I walked up to the Day Care with the Shannon boys.

AS soon as we arrived Christy told us that the rest of the team had just left with Jerry.

Two of the children were terribly ill and had to be taken to the hospital.

One was severely dehydrated (2 second skin pinch.) and the other was unable to keep anything down.

We waited at the Day Care until Jerry came to pick us up a bit before 10.

We picked up Jen and Doug and drove to the Fistula hospital there in Addis.

In case you are wondering at fistulas here is a link to The Fistula Foundation site.

 (warning; it is a bit intense.)

This documentary is about the hospital in addis that we went to.

It is worth a watch.

The tour took us all over the hospital grounds.
We saw recovery rooms, physical therapy rooms and everything else in between.
The ground were beautiful!
I love that they take these women that are dealing with such and emotionally and socially hard thing and give them a beautiful place to recover after.

I will be honest, I was fighting off an off and on  fever during much of the tour which made it very hard to really pay attention.

The tour ended in a small gift shop where you could buy things made by the patients there.
There were hand made baskets, and paper bead necklaces, embroidered towels, knit scarves, small trinket boxes and more.
We all made sure to snatch up some goodies.

After the tour we went to lunch.
Jen (a nurse who is staying in Ethiopia for a while) and I shared a huge "fasting feast" (which means no meat) along with meat tibs.
It was so much food.
The two of us together ate maybe 70% of it.

We sat at the restaurant quite a while and just enjoyed ourselves before going to our 2nd hospital.

This hospital was more of a general hospital that also had special wards for TB, HIV and leprosy. We were invited to see the leprosy ward.
The men giving us the tour took us into the patients rooms and made sure we got up close and personal with the leprosy patients.
We made and effort to shake hands with as many of these people as possible.
We then told the tourguides that we felt very rude going into these rooms and want to respect their privacy more.

After walking us through rooms of patients with leprosy and telling us about how these patients had to have amputations they then walk up to a door and ask us to come in.
From our angle all we see in the room is a guy operating a power saw.
Finally someone was brave enough to peek in and found that a Dr. was just cutting off someones cast.
hahaha

They then showed us the PT rooms in the leprosy wards.
People who have finished their leprosy treatment go here to regain as much of their motor function as possible.

At the end of the tour we stumbled upon a Nurse who has been working in the leprosy field years and years.
He told us about working in rural villages before coming to the hospital. He also took us into a tukul where he teaches self care classes for lepers.
He was so excited about talking with us and sharing his knowledge.
He then introduced us to their lead dermatologist who is also one of the top leprosy Doctors in the world.
This Doctor was examining a patient that had some of the first signs of leprosy.
It was one of those experiences that not many medical people get, or really any people get.

By the time we got back to the house I was feeling so terrible that I just went to bed.
The rest of the group did a teaching to the moms and the day care.

It was also Christy's Birthday. We were so fortunate to be a part of the celebration. The boys had made cake that was divine.
The little Shannon, Hanna, was so excited about the cake that you would not believe it.
She was jumping up and down and dancing.
It was so cute!
Sadly I was feeling so badly that I only had a small piece of cake and ran to bed right after finishing.