Guest writer.....

So for all of you out there who are bored to the back teeth with talk of netball courts, football pitches and solar panels, you have a guest writer this week. Yep, it’s Pam with news of things Malawian and medical. Groan for the non-medics.

Innocent

 

I’ve been spending my time in Malawi working as a Paediatric Registrar at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital. This is attached to the Malawian College of Medicine and the Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Trust so is pretty big and important (unlike me). It’s been a total trial by fire with very big highs and very deep lows as you can imagine.

 






 



Esther & Akuzike

I have been working in the Paediatric Department which is excellent. The staff are a mixture of Malawians and Ex-pats who work well together and form a very friendly and cohesive department. Paeds consists of 10 wards and I started in September on Paediatric Special Care. This cares for those 6m-16y with all manner of weird and wonderful conditions. There are the bread and butter malaria, typhoid, pneumonia and gastroenteritis but then come the odd and perplexing, and the textbook presentations of things you thought you’d never see. It was fascinating and chaotic; a total whirlwind that left me exhausted but wanting to absorb more knowledge. It was also infuriating and frustrating to see children dying of preventable diseases and when we did not have enough resources to save them.

Edina

Erick

 

Ndaziona

That takes me onto Moyo (Life) Ward, the malnutrition unit where I spent the rainy season. The frustration and heartbreak intensified with, on average one death of a child per day and a mortality rate of 30%. The ravaging interaction between HIV, TB and malnutrition are apparent here and it can feel like a losing battle. I had to bring my barriers close to not break down with every death and I’ve never had a tougher emotional challenge at work. But when the darkness is so absolute, the sun is all the brighter for it. The Malawian mothers and their children are loving and resilient. The beauty of watching a mother care selflessly for her incredibly sick child is intense and I cherish it.

 





Olive

I never thought I’d feel that Paediatric Oncology is an emotional break but that’s where I find myself now. I work on a ward with up to 30 patients, all suffering from various forms of cancer. There are the same conditions as in the UK (leukaemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma, Wilm’s tumour etc) and then the African extras (Burkitt’s lymphoma, Kaposi Sarcoma). I had the privilege to be working for Professor Elizabeth Molyneux who is a legend and I am honoured to have worked with her.  Unfortunately she has had to return to the UK for a time but she has left me with a great Consultant, Dr Kicky Mittermayer, who has taken on the challenge of working in Prof’s shadow with grace and fortitude.

 

I’ve added some pictures of the kids at Queens who are so amazing and irrepressible.

 

Feston, Chisomo, Solomon & Innocent

A beautiful newborn babe on Chatinkha Nursery

Wizzy when he fell asleep on a bear

I know this is a little intense but I’m putting in a poem. I think you can take it after  9 months of Christopher’s ridiculousness. It gives a bit of insight into my feelings about our year in Malawi (on a good day). It was written in 1910 by Mary Gaunt in Sierra Leone.

 

The fascination Africa has always held for those who visit her shores has hitherto been the fascination of the mistress, never of the wife.

She held out no lure, for she was no courtesan. A man came to her in his eager youth, asking, praying that she would give him that which should make life good, and she trusted and opened her arms.

What she had to give she gave freely, generously, and there was no stint, no lack. And he took. Her charm he counted on as a matter of course, her tenderness was hid due, her passion his pleasure, but the fascination he barely admitted could not keep him.

Though she had given all, she had no rights and, when other desires called he left her, left her with words of pity that were an injury, of regret that were an insult.

But all this is changing.

Africa holds. The man who has known Africa longs for her.

In the sordid city street he remembers the might and loneliness of her forests, by the rippling brook he remembers the wide rivers rushing tumultuous from the lakes, in the night when on the roof the rain’s splashing drearily he remembers the mellow tropical nights, the sky of velvet far away, the stars like points of gold, the warm moonlight that with its deeper shadows made a fairer world.

Even the languor and the heat he longs for, the wide surf on yellow sand of the beaches, the thick jungle growth gently matted, rankly luxuriant, pulsating with the irrepressible life of the tropics.

All other places……. are tame.

 

STAT(WO)MAN (Christopher says I have to put this in):

Children in the Paediatric Department: 250-350

Kiddies I’m responsible for when on call: 250-350

Cuties on my ward: 25-35 (thank goodness)

Cockroaches on the wards: countless

Number of times I’ve been recognised out of work (“Dr Pam!””Azungu dokotala!”): 5

Cupboards organised (my anally retentive pleasure): 3

Ridiculous signs around the hospital: see last week’s blog

Robert