A Day in the Life

My typical day in Uganda starts at 7:00 am when I wake up and get ready for the day. We eat breakfast between 8:30 and 9:00 am, breakfast typically includes hot chocolate and a banana and peanut butter chapatti. After breakfast, we usually either listen to a lecture from Dr. Anguyo on a specific health topic or walk down to one of the clinics in town.

In the mornings, I usually go to either the maternal clinic or the general clinic because that’s where most of the patients come in the mornings. While at the clinics, I will see patients with the doctors or physician assistants and learn about the processes they use to diagnose and to learn about different illnesses and conditions that affect many of the patients that come to the clinic. While I am doing this, I will typically bring a notebook with me and take notes on the patients and the treatments provided to them. The doctors at the clinics are extremely helpful and are happy to teach us and answer any questions we have. Even when there aren’t very many patients and the clinics are slow, the doctors and nurses are happy to answer our questions or just talk to us and get to know us while we are there.

Sometimes, I will help take blood pressures, heights, and weights, especially at the maternal clinic. The nurses at the maternal clinic will also let us help with the physical examination of some of the patients by listening to the fetal heartbeat and feeling for the fetus’ head and spine. They also let us take a turn trying to estimate how many weeks old the fetus is by palpating for the bottom of its spine. On Thursdays, we always go to the maternal clinic, unless we have an outreach, because that is the day the sonographer comes with the portable ultrasound and the clinic gets a lot of patients. When the sonographer comes, she usually lets us help with the ultrasounds and lets us try to find the fetus’ head and heartbeat.

At around 1:00 pm I walk back up to the KIHEFO apartments for lunch and some free time. After lunch, at around 3:00 pm I will usually walk back down to one of the clinics and ask one of the lab technicians to show me some slides under the microscope or ask the doctors about any questions I have for them as there aren’t as many patients at the clinics in the afternoons. On other days, I will stay at the apartments and do some laundry or work on some homework or play games with the other students and the staff until dinner. We usually eat dinner around 8:00 pm, and play games or have a fire until around 9:30. At 9:30 we usually all disperse to our separate apartments and either go to bed or work on homework. I usually spend some time reading my book until around 10:30 or 11:00 and then I go to bed for the night.