Chidamoyo Hospital in Zimbabwe

Well this is a special week for the hospital.   We are in a special immunization push this week called NIDS (National Immunization Days).   Throughout the country every child under 5 years old is revaccinated for Measles and Polio and caught up with any other immunizations they might need.   This is always a busy time as many moms wait until NIDS and then they have to catch up.   The first day the team was gone from 8 a.m. until 10:30 p.m. covering 3 areas.   Sarah, one our interns who has been with us for almost 2 months, went out for her first Immunization clinic since she arrived and boy was it an experience!   She came home exhausted but willing to go back for more fun the next day!   She finally got dinner by 11 p.m.! We welcomed Dr. Dereck Taniguchi and his wife Jo and son Kevin and Kevin’s girlfriend Rachel from Seattle on Monday.   Jo and Rachel are nurses and Kevin is applying for medical school next year.   So the second day...

Today I was able to take a nice hot shower and with electricity! To me this was heaven! After 4 days this week of struggling with water we went to buy 2 new pumps for our boreholes—yes a constant issue! All this week I have been taking water from a barrel outside by bucket to flush the toilet and take a bucket bath! Since there usually hasn’t been electricity in the morning I manage to splash cold water on in a hurry, wash my hair and get out! Winter is here and it has been down to 48 this week—living in a fridge! We are all complaining it is too cold and looking forward to the October heat! I got my electric under blanket out and but it on the bed and set it so whenever the electricity comes on at night my bed warms up—yeah! The one thing about winter here is the deep blue skies with no clouds! It is so beautiful. Fires in the fireplace are also nice! This week I was sick in bed for 2 days, but managed to work a few hours in between fevers. I go to see my Zim doctor in Harare thi...

Revival at Major's village I returned from South Africa on Friday, May 18 th .   I was feeling better and I had more blood and urine tests run and were awaiting results.   Major was waiting to pick me up and I got to see Dr. Palleschi for a few minutes before he boarded his plane home.   He was kept busy for the 8 days he was in the country seeing many patients and teaching our doctors how to do scans, hernia repairs and prostectomies.   Dr. Kellert served as his scrub nurse some of the surgeries! We left the airport and spent the next 3 hours running to get things for the hospital before places closed.   We got blood, car parts and some electrical supplies, propane gas and groceries.   Ran into my friend Gladys who was in town from her home 3 hours east of Harare and we were able to sit in her friend, Sylvia’s flat and have tea in the dark—no ZESA!   Then we headed for home and got here 12:30 a.m. While I was gone a new visitor arrive nam...