Joy Hospice and the Clinic

This last week has been very busy. On tuesday I met Dr. Jan, who runs Joy Hospice, and went to a little clinic in a village about 35 kms outside of Mbale. It takes about 2 hours to get there, though, because the roads are so bad. Jan goes there once a week, every Tuesday, to see patients, and the other days of the week the clinic is run by two nurses. We saw many different patients, including lots of children. One girl was 16 years old and was quite sick. She had abdominal pain and was very anemic (not enough blood), so we took her back with us at the end of the day to the regional hospital. Diagnosing is difficult at the clinic, because we can not do any tests, but Jan diagnosed quite a few children with Malaria. The next day I spent the day at Joy Hospice with Jan. We saw one girl who is 20 years old and has sickle cell anemia. She was very sick, her hemoglobin was 6 (14 is normal), which is a critically low level of blood, so she desperately needed a blood transfusion. We have to get blood from the regional hospital, so much of the day was spent attempting to get the blood. The hospital was informed that we needed it and assured us that it was just being tested and should be ready soon. We finally got it about 4 hours later, when the girl's hemoglobin was down to 4. She could have easily died by then, so that was quite scary. But things like that happen quite routinely over here apparently.
Anyhow that's all for now, i tried uploading pictures but it won't let me, so you will have to wait until I get back to see them!