Home sweet home!

We moved into our house today! It's a lovely little bungalow with 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, kitchen and big living room and garden. For the last 2 days we've been staying in the doctors' guesthouse and having meals cooked for us which was nice but it's lovely to have moved in and been able to finally unpack and stop living out of a rucksack! We went shopping and have a fridge full of giant avocadoes and passion-fruit which cost 3p!

The last two days have been hectic and exhausting. Everyone is really friendly though and very pleased to have 2 extra doctors to help out. I'm relieved to be on paeds rather than adults! The day starts at 8 with a 30 minute service/meeting in the hospital chapel. They understand that we're not Christians but it's polite to attend and it's an interesting cultura experience. Then we go to the ward and do a ward round of the children and then the newborn babies. At the moment there are between 20 and 30 children and about 10-15 neonates. The round takes all morning and we see most of the children alone, with the consultant seeing the sick ones and any others she wants to. She's very nice and I think I'll learn lots from her.  I'll write another post soon with more details of the hospital and the things we see on the ward. Lots of the children are really poorly when they come in but most get better, I'm very relieved that our 2 sickest both started opening their eyes today. The newborns have a more turbulent course and 2 have died in the last 24 hours which is horrible. It's quite harrowing but it's also lovely when they improve.

We have lunch around 1.30 and then have a nice lazy afternoon until we go back in at 4 to see any that the nurses are worried about and review the new admissions. The nurses on paeds are great and quite independent. I felt bad about having this time off at first and then I realised it's the time that in the UK I'd spend writing discharge summaries and doing other paperwork- there's much less of it here! The nurses do all the bloods and cannulas and sort out discharges. At the moment there is a British medical student, Becky, and a Ugandan student, Charity, on paeds too so we share the work but Becky's changing to surgery next week and Charity is moving hospital so it might just be me and Dr Mary, the consultant. I will let you know!