11th September

11TH September

Two hours ago I was high, high on Tea!! Had my first cup of tea in about four weeks, it was good but made me feel really merry for about an hour, much to confusion of my housemate, who loves tea and has about 6 cups a day here. My housemate who I bitched about in the last blog has redeemed herself in my books. Not only has ignited a flame of desire in me to be a surgeon, she and I worked as a team on fire on Friday. The great thing about Dr Adongo is that he will show you step by step how to do surgical procedures, even if it is your first time. Yesterday was my flat mates first time assisting in a C-section and she was fabulous, next week itl be my turn but I was so impressed by Drs teaching and her confidence –what she lacks in social skills she really makes up for in theatre confidence. Gonna big myself up too cause the baby came out blue, without a pulse and not breathing, and I under the direction of a midwife bought the baby back to life (okay it still had trouble breathing 10 minutes) but turns out it had an infection from mum. So that was Friday and can I add that I still was heavily fatigued from my brush of death with malaria! –lol.

So newsflash I wanna be a surgeon. NEVER had I ever thought that I would utter those words. General medicine all the way, i thought, perhaps working for an NGO or aid agency. I think that I will still do this but man alive surgery is definitely appealing to me now. Everyone says that Surgery = no life, delayed child rearing in women, lack of sleep, early aging, increased risk of stress related disorders, etc etc, but we only live once right and frankly if I don’t follow this thread through I might live to regret it. I wish that I had this epiphany earlier on in this African adventure though cause I could have participated in more surgery. Umph.

Something occurred to me this morning, 10 years ago, post my GCSE results, we were asked what we wanted to be when we were older, well my answer had been ‘a doctor’ since I was twelve. If all goes well and to plan, I should be a Doctor in nine months –does this mean that I am grown up? Will I at this point be an adult? This scares me a little, no actually I’m quite worried, as being a student means the usual responsibilities of life that ‘working people’ must adhere to have no relevance to me, and in the odd occasion that they do (e.g paying rent) if I fuck it up I can hide under the safety umbrella of being a student. This umbrella closes in nine months and to be honest I don’t think Im ready for the responsibilities of a working life. I mean, im excited and read to be a Dr but along with that i become a professional, not ready mate. There isn’t even a transitional period in which I can prepare myself for the working world, well we get a month off before we start our jobs but still, not sure that that month is going to used for organisation, more intoxication mate. Anyhow, maybe the fact that I am thinking (worrying) about working life, about joining the masses and becoming a useful tax paying member of society is a step towards preparing myself for this inevitability.

Some other things,

Yesterday I saw run over dog in the road. Great thing about Kenyan life is that one gets to see stuff that just isn’t socially acceptable in the UK. I was fascinated, this dog had obviously be run over by a matatu. It was lain dead in the center of the road with it entrails coming out of its mouth. I was disgusted but morbidly fascinated and with some of the village kids we inspected (visually off course) what parts of the entails we could recognise and name. Sick I know but every experience is an opportunity here and I assume that I wont get to see such a display of gruesome again!