February 2nd, 2012: Another day at the hospital. I spent a lot of time with the students today showing them how to do head-to-toe assessments and such. I felt like a few students really learned something. If that is all that I accomplish this trip, then that is good enough for me! That student will graduate and share their knew knowledge with other nurses, and so on. We dressed the wound that I described yesterday. My friend did a wonderful job and all the nursing students were referring to her as the 'wound nurse'! It is what she is thinking of doing after she graduates so it was really nice to see her doing her thing. I discovered that the patient who had what I thought was a urostomy actually had 2 fistulas, or tunnels from the bladder to the skin that were not supposed to be there. It turns out, the surgery that she had to fix her bowels and give her a colostomy was botched. So now, these fistulas are showing up. That was really frustrating to see. The student I was with helped to clean her up and such and when she aws done charting and everything I asked her if she learned this all in school? She replied yes. I asked why she doesn't do these things and she replied I don't have the time. So that was really sad to see. When I was eating my lunch, I heard a "I NEED A DOCTOR!" so I dropped my lunch and ran towards my friend who was now yelling my name trying to get me to find her. She had traveled in the back of a truck with a young patient who had been seizing from a terrible case of malaria. I hopped in the back of the truck and helped her bag the patient and such. Luckily a doctor came to our aide and he ordered some medication. We moved the patient to a room and the pediatrician joined us and helped as well. When we left, the patient had been moved to ICU and was stable. When I returned to get my bag that I had left in a hurry, it was gone. No one could find it and my instructor told me that there was a psychiatric patient that sometimes picked up stray things. So I just lost it. All I could think was that I had tried to save a little boys life and now my bag has been stolen and I am screwed because my bag had EVERYTHING in it. My visa, debit card, passport, everything. I panicked because I wouldn't be able to get home. A few minutes later my partner found me and told me that she had my bag! She had picked it up when I went running and she brought it to the ward that I was working on originally. I was so relieved. The rest of the day was good we got pictures with the students and nurses on the ward! Unfortunetly I am not feeling so well. I think I have got strep throat again, probably from such a stressful week. I am looking forward to a night of rest though and on Saturday we are going on a boat cruise which will be a lovely break. It is very emotionally and physically straining working here, but worth every minute and all the sweat.