Staff Changes and Visa Denials

Monday, September 9

Before I start today’s report, I need to mention a few things. First, I failed to include my Venmo account name when I asked for funds for Dr. Catherine’s patient support. My account is @Alyson-Denson. Secondly, I so appreciate all of your sweet comments On the blog. I hope there is not frustration that I don’t respond to each. It is simply hard to find the time, but each morning I start my day reading my notifications and your encouragement gives me a loving start to the day. Thank you!  

School started today in Nkhoma.  That meant 3 littles from the children’s home started school for the first time.  All dressed in uniforms with new backpacks. They filed out in a line waving goodbye with that walk that 4-5 year olds do that is a combo skip, jump, and jog in their excitement.  I wish I had taken a picture. Nicole reported later that within 5 seconds of hitting the school they were all crying and clinging to her legs. Well, it looked like a good start.

Morning report was fairly typical this morning.  We do have some medical residents visiting from UCLA that gave a little lecture on arthritis today.  After morning report, the clinicians stayed back for a meeting. For the next few months, the hospital is very short staffed secondary to a few clinical officers resigning and some on rotations at other hospitals and some vacations.  We have a tropical medicine resident who is trained in OB/GYN and Pedi. She has been doing OB/GYN here but her MD supervisor is gone for 2 weeks and she can not practice legally without an MD. Therefore, they are moving her with me on Pedi but then moving my clinical officers to other departments. For me it will be fine, but I was planning to go on a safari this weekend but now I will not be able to go.  I should have time to do it later.

We only have about 11 patients on the pediatric ward but all of them needed test and other things this morning so it was well after 11 before rounds finished.  Then in the NICU we did a lot of research and discussion about one with some rare findings. The student and resident went to lunch around 12:30. Someone has to cover during the lunch time as my clinical officer was gone, so I stayed and had a few admissions.  I left for lunch long after 2.

I arrived at Hope’s Inn to find Melissa in tears.  The embassy sent an email saying that her girls’ visas were denied.  Truly, she has two girls that according to Malawi are hers but they cannot travel to the USA to go home with her.  She is stuck. The consular is basically questioning the validity of the mom giving up her rights and the childrens’ placement in state custody despite two different court decisions placing them with the Smith’s.  It is mind boggling! Her lawyer is working on next steps, but she is a defeated mama.

I did go back to the hospital for a few hours and had another admission and spent some time with the ultrasound tech doing some diagnostics on a patient.  We have had several now with TB exposures that now have findings suggestive of TB. 

This evening I spent some time taking polaroids of the kids and talking through the ABC’s with them.  There is a metal iguana wall hanging and we “fed” it the magnet alphabet letters as they came up with foods that started with that letter.  This was all really just to give Melissa a little emotional wiggle room.

Later, most of us headed over to Hanna’s house for a going away party.  It was great because both ex-pats and Malawians were there. We all brought pot luck dishes.  I brought two bags of chips and did not once feel bad about it. The Malawians have been teasing me about learning to Malawian dance.  I went all in at the party and they thought it was awesome, or hysterical-it is a fine line! I will say that God gave some extra muscles and loosened some ligaments in my Malawian friends.  This white girl did her best. Anyway, I do think it did wonders in improving nurse relations-I got more hugs and high fives tonight than total so far.  

I do regret that on  my camera roll today all I have is an X-ray and some video that

others captured of my mad dancing skills.  So I will leave you with this...