So I'll start of by saying that I'm doing pretty well and I'm mostly on the mend now from a cold I got the other day. This blog post is going to be about my experience with the medical facilities and doctors here, but I just want you all to know at the beginning that I'm doing well now and I'm feeling a lot better then I was the other day.
So Thursday morning I woke up with a deep chest cold, after having no symptoms of a cold the night before when I went to bed. This concerned me because I've never had a cold develop that fast, or one quiet so intense. It hurt to cough and to take deep breaths. By the afternoon I was starting to not feel well in general and my wise friends told me to go to the hospital and get a malaria test and see what they said. I didn't have any malaria symptoms but it's always people's first assumptions here, and as one of my friends pointed out if I did have a case it might be compromising my immune symptom. I've got some smart friends.
My boss took me to the clinic she trust and upon hearing my cough the doctor decided I was going to get an immediate injection of two antibiotics because she thought it was some sort of chest infection based on the rapid way it had set in and the awful sound of my cough. I don't want people to be alarmed by her response because there are three ways to handle medication situations here, and none of them actually involve trying to find out what is wrong with you aside from a malaria or typhoid test because they simply don't have the capabilities to actually diagnose people, and most people don't have the money to pay for expensive test to find out what illness they actually have. So the courses of action for illness of just about anything are as such: 1) be given oral medication based on your symptoms and hope that fixes the problem 2) throw everything they have at it including immediate injections of antibiotics paired with an oral set of antibiotics to follow up and hope that works 3) check you into a hospital or evac you to Nairobi where they have high level medical facilities capable of diagnosing you and treating you according to what you have.
They didn't listen to my chest or do any x-rays to determine what was going on, they just heard my cough, knew there was something wrong and that I was past stage one of attempting to deal with a regular cold, and moved to step two. I got an immediate injection of two different antibiotics followed up with a section injection of another antibiotic today and tonight I start a regimen of antibiotics paired with a couple other medications. I've spent the last day and a half in bed mostly resting at the insistance of my boss who says that people who work when they're sick take twice as long to get better. She wouldn't even let me talk about work today, so I've been reading and laying in bed, but watching some TV on my laptop. My body wasn't so interested in sleep today, which I think is a good sign since I napped a good amount yesterday, and I also didn't want to nap all day and then not be able to sleep tonight, but it was a very restful day.
I can say that not long after the first injection of antibiotics I started to feel better and today after my second injection I feel pretty good and the cough has moved out of my chest into more of a slight head cold, which while not pleasant, doesn't worry me nearly as much now that my chest isn't hurting and coughing isn't painful anymore. I can handle a head cold, and hopefully the continued antibiotics I'm taking will take care of that in the next couple of days. My cough sounds like the end of a cold now, so I'm thankful the doctors acted quickly and nipped whatever it was I had. I lost a day and a half of work, which was really unfortunate, I had to cancel a meeting and I'm behind on my focus group work now but I'm hoping to make up some of that work over this weekend now that I'm feeling better. (I'm actually feeling a lot better now as I write this on Friday night, aside from a slight cough).
Anyways, it was an interesting view of the medical system here. It's nothing like at home, they don't ask you the basic questions that we assume are coming at a doctor's office visit. For instance no one asked me what medications I was on before prescribing things (I assume because most people aren't on medication here, or alternatively, it doesn't really matter since they only have a few courses of action they can take). When I became concerned about the cost of the medication (I carried a certain amount of money into the country and that's all I have since there isn't any banking system here to speak of) she took that into consideration and when additional medication was added to my prescription my bill didn't go up. I'm extremely fortunate in that I'm able to afford things like malaria test and medication. Most people here don't have the money for the testing, much less the medication for malaria or other illnesses and so suffer through it without the help of medication. I'm extremely lucky to have access to a clinic with the resources the one I went to has, and to be able to afford its services.
Hopefully my next blog post is a bit more interesting, but being out of commission for the last day and a half I don't have much to write about. My week before that was mostly just meetings and writing up reports of my meetings. My weeks have a fairly distinct work pattern to them now that doesn't make for much to write home about, but I'll try and write a bit more about daily life here in the future.
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