Blood, Sweat, & No Tears

October 20th was a day to remember😁😂. I had coffee with Janice in the morning and talked with her about how I might go check out the new organization Diana had told me about called Musana. She was super nice and flexible. We talked about RG for about two hours, and I showed her the prom video. I also figured out what I was going to paint in the computer lab.

I sat with the s3 students while they worked on their paintings again. Then, I grabbed my paints, along with some from the main office, and headed to the library which contains the computer lab. I got a simple background done and then walked outside to play basketball with the boys. I played 21 with Owili, Jimmy, Denis, and Kizito. 21 is a game in which each player tries to score 21 points, and it's every man for himself. If you have the ball, it is you versus everyone else. Kizito had the ball, and I was playing defense pretty close to him. I don't really know how, but Kizito and I smashed heads, and I just remember feeling like it was a very hard hit. I started walking off the court slowly to take a little breather, but then I realized that I was fine, and I wanted to keep playing. As I felt a bead of sweat drip down my face, I made eye contact with a couple of the guys playing with me. Owili's eyes got wide, and he told me that I should probably get a towel or something to wipe off my face. I asked why I needed a towel, and Kizito said that I had a pretty deep cut. I didn't really believe the boys because only the initial blow was painful. I walked over to the concrete where my phone was sitting and opened it up to see if it was really that bad. Sure enough, the bead of sweat was actually a small stream of blood, flowing all the way down to my shirt. Kizito felt terrible, but I assured him that I was not mad at all and that it was more funny than it was painful. Below is a picture I made Kizito take with me so that I could document the experience 😂.

I walked back to show Dr. Tim, and he told me that I would be needing a few stitches because he could see all the way to the muscle. He almost performed the procedure on me right then and there in his house, but he did not have the correct size of hook with him. He called Dr. Robert, who is my neighbor, and took me to the RG hospital. Dr. Robert and two nurses walked me back to the surgery room and put on sterile clothes. Dr. Robert gave me four shots of lidocaine right in my open cut. That was probably the most painful part, and it really wasn't terrible. It just felt like a few pinches. He gave me four stitches, and then I was good to go! The whole experience was slightly humorous because all week I kept telling Dr. Robert that I couldn't wait to shadow him to see what Ugandan healthcare was like, and I ended up experiencing it firsthand as his patient 😂. 

Dr. Robert even took me home on his boda. I've never had a doctor drive me home after operating on me in the US... exceptional treatment 😂! On the ride home, I asked him a few questions about the hospital and ended up asking him about HIV because the percentage of cases here is way higher than it is in America. He said that he's had a total of 45 cases since the hospital opened up years ago. It isn't a common disease that is seen at RG, but when a patient does come into the hospital with HIV, the disease is treated with pills to suppress the virus. Because the medication does not kill the virus, patients have to take it for the rest of their lives. 

I had dinner with Tim and Janice when I got back, and it was one of the best dinners that I'd had while at RG!