July 16

                Today was an unexpected field experience. Today I was admitted to an African hospital. Last night I went to bed very early feeling very tired. Beth woke me up by accident around 10pm and I was nauseous and freezing cold. I was up and down to the toilet for the rest of the night and my fever spiked to 102 degrees. I was drenched in sweat when the fever broke and I was finally able to sleep for a few hours. In the morning my temperature was normal, but when Michael and Nathan heard about it they insisted that I be taken to hospital straight away to be tested for malaria.

                Nathan picked me up in his car and once again drove me down the bumpy road. This time, past the pharmacy and around a few bends to the University of Ghana Hospital. I’ll preface my description of the hospital by saying that’s very lucky that I was hospitalized in Legon.  Here we have easy access to the best hospital around as well as equipt pharmacies and a clean and stable place to rest. Some of our future planned locations may not be so accomidating.

                I followed Nathan into the emergency room which unlike the sterile white washed waiting rooms in western hospitals, this one was an open air court yard. A green lawn in the middle, which several bushes of the spiky pink flower I’ve seen on the campus. The four corners of the courtyard are occupied by reception, the nurses’ station, the cashier’s office and the laboratory. The far wall is punctuated by several doors leading into examination rooms, and every other space available is crammed with chairs. Once again, I noticed that the people in the room are all very well dressed. East Legon is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the most modern city in the country, so I feel confident that if I had to visit a hospital in Ghana, this is the one I would want.

                The thing that this hospital had most in common with its Canadian counter parts was the look on the faces of the patients. There is a distinct expression in an emergency room, a combination of vacancy and impatience, loosely masking desperate worry. There were men and women, mostly middle aged and younger. Some alone, some in pairs, mothers with children, and one scared, rather disheveled obruni right in the middle of it all.

                Our first stop was reception where the clerk decied that my name was Jennifer Mary and omitted my last name completely. Mary is an easier name to pronounce than McFarlane I suppose. Then across the courtyard to the cashier’s office, where I had to pay cash for my visit. My health care coverage takes care of things like this although I don’t imagine that automatic transfers from Africa are very common practice. I planned to keep the receipt to submit when I get home, but it turned out to be less than $10 Canadian, so there isn’t much point. 20 cedi isn’t so cheap for a lot of Ghanaians though. I thought about all those mothers with babies in the waiting room and remembered the 10 cedi not that I gave to Tcowitsie yesterday as a gift to her mother and her new baby brother. To me its pittance, but to a family that makes a living off of a fruit stand from 1 cedi a piece, I hope it means more. I can imagine a trip to the doctor with a sick baby would be much more costly for them than it was for me.

Once paid up, I got in line for the nurses’ station where a crisp and curt young woman took my temperature and blood pressure. I had hoped to maybe conduct and interview here, but I could see right away that this was not the time or the place. All of the staff had a forceful efficiency about them, along with the obvious irritability that comes from being over worked and underappreciated.  If nurses have the most stressful job in Canada, I can only imagine what being and African nurse must be like.

                I was then directed to the line of chairs along the wall to the examination rooms. An older nurse in a pink uniform emerged and arranged us in order according to a stack of 7 or 8 folders on her arm. I took my place next to a young woman playing a game on her phone to pass the time, and a mother with a little girl named Angel, who by her squirmy demeanor, I would guess to be about 6 or 7 years old. Angel passed the time by practicing counting her fingers and toes in English, but she got caught up between 16 an17 and finally determined that she had 19 digits in all. Across the way from us, a women in an elegant red dress snoozed standing up with her head on a pillar because the baby on her back refused to be put down. I imagine she was up with him all night and she probably felt as rotten as I did.

Nathan paced around like a worried father asking questions in Twi of any staff that happened to be on hand. I was touched by his concern, but I didn’t want to receive any special treatment over anyone else, who are all just as sick as I was. Even though I could feel the fever clawing it’s way up my back and neck, he told me to sit up. So I clutched my bag tightly and prayed for my stomache to behave.

I don’t know how long we sat there, but I know it was not the 2 to 5 hour wait of a Canadian emergency room. The staff were quite efficient at moving us through quickly, despite several men who tried to jump the cue. It seems that the women are more willing to wait their turn. When the door opened for me a man pushed past me and slammed the door in my face. All the women protested loudly and pushed me into the examination room. The door opened again behind me and I could hear the nurse lecturing a man about jumping the cue.

The examination room was worn but well swept. Dimly lit with mustard colored walls and a few posters showing various diagrams and ailments. There was no window and only a single light bulb. Clearly designed for base functionality in a setting where there is no time for patient comfort. A big wooded desk dominated the room and behind it sat a big man in a colorful shirt, and on the other side the pink nurse was taking down notes and perscriptions.

The doctor asked me to sit and then asked the reason for my visit. I told him about the fever and he asked me a series of questions to all I answered yes. He touched my forehead, examined my eyes and said with the same cold efficiency “ I suspect malaria. Let’s get the blood work to confirm. Take this to the door at the end of the hall.” And handed me a slip of paper.

35 cedi and another short wait later I was in another dark, worn room letting a young lab tech take a vile of my blood. By this time, I was so rattled by being pushed and pulled and glared at that when I dropped my cotton swab I snatched it up apologetically and tried to put it back on my arm. The tech almost slapped my hand and handed me a clean one saying “oh come no! Come now!” Then he told me to come back tomorrow for the test results and just like that I was dismissed and he was on to the next patient.