Last week Shaz, the clinic’s new physician assistant, had her first day. And what a first day it was, because her first patient was Josephine. Josephine came into the clinic in a hammock, carried by her community. She had just recently given birth in the home; the baby was alright but Josephine was losing a tremendous amount of blood. When they checked her, it turns out that her placenta had not yet delivered. When giving birth, the placenta usually delivers shortly after. If not, it can cause serious problems for the mother. Handson, one of the clinic’s midwives, gave her a medication to try to induce contractions to help with the delivery. When that wasn’t working, Handson had to manually extract the placenta.
After all of that, she was still losing a ton of blood, and her blood pressure was still dangerously low. Josephine needed a blood transfusion. The clinic can’t do that so they did their best with what they had. They gave Josephine more fluids to help with the blood pressure. They knew that this was only a temporary fix, so they called some motorbikes to have her transferred across the river to St. Frances hospital. There she can get her blood properly transfused and be on her way to getting better.
Shaz had quite an eventful first day at the clinic, and more eventful days are yet to come. Her, Hanson and the rest of the team did their best that day, and will continue to do their best. As for Josephine, she is recovering at St. Frances, with her new baby boy Emmanuel.
Kasey (the intern)
Po River Medical Clinic 