clinic

We’ve had lots of new epilepsy patients—not surprising as word gets out that the medication is free (paid for by Africa Burn Relief). This entails making sure that people are really having seizures and not just coming for free stuff. Most of the time it really is (or they answer the questions correctly in describing the seizures). There are only 3 medications here for epilepsy and I think that mostly they have been eclipsed in the first world by other drugs to control (or try) seizures. We’ve been having different people see the clinic patients as Dr. Morton has been out of the country. This always takes a bit longer because the doctor isn’t familiar with the patients—not that Dr Morton knows them all but still…last week we had a new patient and while trying to get some background information the translator tells us that the woman is confused. Oh, well that’s not good. So the dr asks some basic questions to find out how confused…what day is it? Where are you? What is this (holding a pen, point to a chair) the woman was able to answer (Tuesday, hospital in nkhoma, pen, chair) then he pointed to the computer on the desk and asked what it was…well, the woman looked and looked, turned her head for a different angle—she just didn’t know what it was…comes from living in the village without electricity… goes to show you how much we take for granted…she was trying…she’d just never seen a computer before. Well, turns out she wasn’t confused per say—she just wasn’t answering the translators questions…