Sister Molly

I have begun my volunteer work at the clinic in the nearby informal settlement area. I feel like a new nurse again and very inexperienced. Partly, this is because the diseases and treatments that are frequently seen are not very present in the US, but mostly its because the nurses here are AMAZING! I am so impressed with them. I have been shadowing a Sister (nurse) who is in charge of PMTCT (Prevention of mother to child transmission) of HIV. She has such a nurturing and compassionate quality about her and I can see how much she cares for each of her patients. And she stays so optimistic and joyful. I have been feeling convicted about my attitude toward the world at times.

Whenever a woman comes to the clinic and is pregnant (they usually don't come until well into their pregnancy so no need for a pregnancy test), they strongly advise that she be tested for HIV. They take them in a group of about 5 to test them and then they get called in privately for the results. I have been doing the tests which is just a quick finger stick and the result appears in a few minutes. For my nursing friends, it looks similar to a strep test, but even quicker. They have an HIV counselor who gives the result and if it is positive they are sent to the nurse that I have been working with to get additional blood draws to determine how immunocompromised she is and to discuss how to keep healthy and what treatment will be needed to keep the baby from getting HIV. Without any treatment, the risk of the baby contracting HIV is up to 40%, but with treatment it is drastically reduced to around 1% (I think). So, it is very important work. In the past 2 days we have probably tested around 35 people and I would guess that 40% are positive. This is a decrease though from what it used to be. The biggest difficulty to me besides everything being so new is the language barrier. Although most people speak English, the nurse usually uses the patient's native language. The nurse I am working with speaks upwards of 6-7 languages fluently. She speaks English, Zulu, Sutu, a few others that I don't know, Afrikaanse, and Tswana (her native language). She told me that when the patient says hello to her, she can determine their native language. So, I am missing a lot of what happens because of this, but they intermix English a lot so I am able to have a general idea of what is being talked about. I hope to take photos of the area at some point, but I need to get a better of idea of how to do this appropriately because I don't want to be offensive.

Otherwise, things are going amazingly. I feel so comfortable and have become involved with a lot of the church members. The other volunteers are great too. So, other than missing family and friends it is going great. I do miss you all and think of you often.

Here are a few pictures:

My room looking quite clean.

The area the clinic is located