Swahili, Sunsets & Sports (Kind Of...?)

~ Tuesday 12th August

Biggest perk of being placed in the dental department? (Aside from the magnificent oral view of course). We get a lie-in because we start so late compared to everyone else. Bliss.

We had Dr Grace all day today thank God and she taught us about the five different categories of dental caries before she started tending to patients. I shouldn't laugh, but they have this system where they have hand-cut circle pieces of cardboard and they write numbers on it in marker pen, then hand it to the patients in numerical order so they call out the numbers and the respective patient comes in. Taking technology for granted has never felt truer.

Again, majority of the patients were extractions (I apologise for sounding like a broken record) but we had a case where this guy in his early twenties had to be treated because of an abscess that he had due to an infected root canal. He was suffering because he had a bag of pus in his oral cavity that was giving rise to abnormal, rubbery tissue that could potentially progress to a tumour, and because pus is acidic, it was eating into the alveolar bone that connects the maxillae and mandible bones to the tooth. So a surgical technique - marsupialisation - had to be employed where a slit had to be cut into the abscess, and then its edges were sutured to allow it to drain before the wound itself was sutured post-draining.

We then had a similar patient where a 60-year old man came in with his whole left side of his face swollen horribly so. It was just ridiculously puffy (excuse my year 2 vocabulary) so when Dr Grace examined him, she found an infection near the maxillary bone which had formed an abscess full of pus. His whole left cheek was almost acting like a sack of pus so it needed draining although it'll take a few days for it to completely drain; he's been put in a ward so he can come back on Friday for its progress to be monitored and if it has all drained, he can be sutured back up again so he can feel like his normal self.

Yes, it was gross to watch but honestly, I'll take it over extractions any day. Oh and we later found out that the aforementioned patient had come in to see Dr Ngezi a few weeks back complaining of the pain, and upon examination he had said that the patient had no cavities, no caries and no infection. Idiot.

How can you have a patient whose left side is twice the size of his right and say nothing is wrong?!?

*Breathes*

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yeah, after our placement finished at 1:30pm, we headed back to the house for lunch. I'm terrible at making a toastie (or anything else for that matter) but I swear, although it looked like a mess of cheese, tomato and bread, it tasted so good. And then I followed it with nutella on toast and hot chocolate because I'm a fatty like that and I've been feeling sugar/chocolate deprived since I've been here. Sue me.

We had a volleyball game on a nearby field afterwards. Well, I sat and took pictures and looked after everyone's belongings but it counts right? I wasn't ready for my non-existent volleyball skills to be showcased and for me to be publicly humiliated. Operating the camera was the safer option. And random, but there was a cow tied to a nearby tree so it was just casually playing the silent observer.

We rushed back in time for our Swahili lesson where we learnt greetings, numbers and common phrases we can use when we're out and about. That was for about an hour and me and Aleks, who's rooming next to me and quite possibly one of the coolest people I've ever met, decided to brave the cold and go up to the top deck to watch the sunset. We ended up intruding on Chris' reading time (sorry Chris!) but it was worth it haha and then we headed off to dinner.

Over dinner, Sam, she's in paediatrics, and she was telling us about this 6-year old girl who's suffering from a form of liver disease that's making her stomach swell up and the doctors told her parents that she's going to die. In order for her to live, they have to fly her out from Iringa to Dar-e-Salam where the Government will then fly her out to India for the treatment she needs because Tanzania can't provide it. And whilst the Government will pay for that, her parents have to pay for the flight to the capital but they told the doctors that they can't afford it - they had to give up the life of their daughter.

Sam later asked how much the flight would be and it's 400 000 shillings, and since there's 40 of us in the house, we're each giving 10 000 shillings to raise the funds to save her life. That's like, £5 per person. It's crazy isn't it? How such a small amount, a sum of money that we wouldn't even think twice about, can save a little girl's life.

Fingers crossed it works out.

After dinner we had a Global Health Tutorial; Dr Emmanuel who works at the hospital in obstetrics and gynaecology came in to talk to us about HIV and AIDS and how it affects Tanzanian locals.

I won't lie, it made me miss uni (a little) so I kind of can't wait till the next one...?

Shoot me.