In which I get STUFF in the MAIL, and eat it.

For once my Saturday wasn’t a huge adventure. I quite enjoyed it, actually. For one thing, the weather decided it would be GORGEOUS again, and whenever we didn’t have a patient in the clinic I sat outside and even got a little bit of a sunburn. It was awesome.

What was not awesome is that I missed my Daddy’s birthday. I talked to him on the phone for a while but then he started getting yelled at because he hadn’t gotten in the shower yet. When I called the house to say happy birthday I was told he was in the shower, and talked to my Grandma, whose birthday it also was, and my Grandpa, and my sister while waiting for him to get out. Then Emmy went to see if he was done and he was still not even in. The same thing had actually had happened a couple of weeks ago. Obviously, I get my tendency to procrastinate from my father. I love you!

Recently in the clinic I’ve seen:
A lady with a 1cm diameter, 1cm deep hole on her inner right shin from getting pricked by a poisonous thorn…I love to watch peroxide bubble inside a wound. :-P
and (well this one I heard) a guy with really bad pneumonia, it was all over both of his lungs. This one was a good learning case. I FINALLY figured out WHAT Naomi has been saying, relative to the way things are already labeled in my mind. She’s been talking about “crepitations” and I couldn’t figure out what she was referring to by them. I’ve heard many times there are ONLY three official lung sounds: rales, ronchi, and wheeze. At first I thought she was using crepitations for ronchi, and then I thought it was rales. And she said something about putting the stethoscope on your hair, and paper. She said “when you put it on your hair, that’s the cause, and when you put it on paper, it’s the finding” and I’m like…what on earth does that mean? That doesn’t make any sense to me. If hair is the cause why are we listening to the cause with a stethoscope? If we can hear it, isn’t that the finding? And since when do the lungs get hairy? I know there’s those tiny cilia…but you can’t hear THEM, they’re microscopic and only in the trachea!?!?
So we got this pneumonia patient and I hear that “something is not right” as Miss Clavelle would say. So she asks me “how is the chest?” I said “I don’t know what to call it. It sounds hollow and echo-y” and she listened and said it was crepitations. And I am like….ok. Explain this whole thing to me again because I don’t know what you’re talking about. After a few minutes of her talking and me asking questions I finally figured out that she was saying hair is COARSE crepitatins and paper is FINE crepitations. AHA! (Gotta love accents…) Now I don’t know why she calls either of them crepitations, maybe it’s just the British system way of referring to rales, which is what you’re supposed to hear with pneumonia…but anyway, it’s been figured out and now I know what she’s calling things for future reference.
At least I know when there’s a problem? Knowing what exactly to call it is a special bonus I guess. :-p
We’ve had several people with malaria, typhoid, and intestinal amoeba…
Oh yeah, and there is a man who had a stroke and Naomi goes to his house (like 5 minute walk away) every 2 weeks to change his urinary catheter so I went with her this time. It was my first time walking around in bright daylight so I quite enjoyed the walk. For some reason the lab tech and the pastor who keeps the books came with us, and when we got back everyone else was winded. I’m thinking….it’s a 5 minute walk. So I asked how far she usually walks to work? About 20-30 minutes. So why was this walk winding? She said she thought it was the speed we were walking. So that I guess is the secret to the African ability to walk everywhere you need to go…you just walk as slow as you feel like, and you can do it forever. Also why nobody arrives on time for anything. :-P

Mentioning Naomi’s accent reminded me of this: There are many different Kenyan accents, depending on which tribe they are from and which language is their mother tongue. Most of the time I’ve been among people from the Kikuyu tribe (they are the most common people in this area of Kenya) so I’ve gotten used to their accent. Their English is difficult to understand because Kikuyu doesn’t differentiate between the letters “l” and “r”. So they will say “blight” when they mean “bright” and you can’t tell when they mean “load” or “road” except by context. Until you get used to it you have to take a minute and wonder what they mean before you get it. But I’ve gotten used to, whenever I hear something that doesn’t make sense, stick an l or r wherever they put the other, and often that does the trick. Naomi’s accent is different because she is a Kisi, and I haven’t gotten used to her particular “dialect” of English yet, I guess. In Naivasha Nancy was telling me there’s one tribe whose language doesn’t differentiate between p and b…and so it goes on.

When I left Nairobi a couple weeks ago, I knew I had some packages in the post office but couldn’t get them before I left. So today, Danny brought them up to Limuru when he had another errand to run. I love you guys. J
Package 1 was from the Pandolfos and package 2 was from Danielle at Cornell with cards from several of my chi alphans and I love every one of you because you all make me smile and laugh and just made my day. My taste buds are thrilled at little tastes of America. Also, I don’t think anyone around here has seen a marshmallow before, especially not in the form of a Peep, so it was really fun to watch the kids eat those.

Chi Alphans you make me laugh, a lot, and a giant piece of me is in Ithaca still, wishing I was having illegal bonfires with you guys. And here is a shout out to Justin Kerekes. Does it diminish the shout-out if I mention that you asked for it? Sorry if it does…I guess it’s too late. :-P I’ll make up for it by saying kudos to you for writing TWO cards. Though one was mostly about Jon. I was about to say I miss watching you two torture each other, but really it only goes one way.

Anyway, so as much joy as it brings me to get tastes of home, it makes me MISS everyone a lot. I see stuff on facebook from the people who are still at Cornell, or my family members, and I almost get mad that I’m not there because I feel like I should be there! If it didn’t cost a bazillion dollars and wouldn’t set me back another 4 years in my life plans I would go back and get another degree from Cornell in Italian or something, just so I could be there longer. :-P

Anyway.
This is a good time to announce that since it’s past May 12^th there are officially less than 2 months left in this journey. If a few specific people would move to Kenya I would never want to leave this place but because they’re in the US, I am excited to go home…but still very, very much looking forward to the rest of the adventures in store for me here. J

Also, I just ate a whole pack of fruit snacks. Not the little kid-sized ones. The big, Welches ones like you see in vending machines. I don’t think it was healthy but it was delicious.