Ok, it turns out that I'm not that good at blogging regularly. I shouldn't be surprised by this, as I am reasonably sure that I have undiagnosed ADHD and get very easily distracted. ANYWAY. We have been super-busy here in Angola but it hasn't seemed all that exciting to motivate me to want to write anything about it. Now that I will be leaving for Texas to spend Christmas with my family in 48 hours (YAY!!!), I figured it was time to update the old blog-er-oo.
In Cabinda, we have been very busy keeping up with developing our sickle cell newborn screening and clinic program. Each week, we are busy supervising our laboratory's operations (we have 1 lab tech working right now, Lanzi, who is HILARIOUS); visiting the maternity hospitals to update nurses, bring supplies, and pick up the dried blood spot samples that the nurses collect for us; meet with local doctors and officials; and develop more plans for the program. Recently, we restarted Portuguese lessons with our teacher, Sao, in Houston via Skype for 90 minutes twice weekly. We have administrative conference calls to attend, MANY spreadsheets to update, emails to respond to, etc etc. This is the first desk-based job that I've ever had!
Luckily, over the last 2 weeks our babies were finally getting old enough to come into clinic and start taking our vaccines and medications, so we were able to start our "real" doctor-work in addition to all of the public health/program development work that we have already been doing. Because the children with sickle cell disease are at high risk of death in the first year of life, but are protected by the presence of fetal hemoglobin and maternal antibodies for the first few months of life, we bring the little ones in for their first visit at 6-8 weeks of life. We are learning as we go what works to convince parents to come bring in their babies, which seem healthy to their parents at this time, to our clinic. So far we have seen 4 babies and spent lots of time educating the moms about sickle cell disease, giving penicillin (to be given every single day), folic acid (once weekly), an insecticide-treated mosquito net to prevent malaria, and a pneumococcal vaccine. We also repeat the blood test for sickle cell disease, just to make sure that we are treating the right patient. Of our 4 patients, only 1 of the moms had even heard of sickle cell disease, so we have a huge job ahead of us in trying to educate the community and advocate for this "invisible" patient group.
At this point, I am basically emotionally and physically exhausted and can't wait to go home for some of my momma's chicken and dumplings. Oh, and maybe see some family and friends, too.
So...feliz natal, boas festas, and prospero ano novo!
See you all back here next year! One of my new year's resolutions will be to try to be a better, more consistent blogger. :)
