Busy week at Chidamoyo

-

This week went very quickly.  On Tuesday the 19th I picked up a new visitor, Julie Gibson, from CA and Florida.  She has been accepted into Medical School in July and came her to get some hands on experience.   She has been busy and her first day here she learned to draw blood and watched some bones being set.

Thursday we went to Harare and got registered with our truck to be able to transport.  We bought a baler box and packs for tobacco to start transporting to Harare and Karoi soon.  We are excited that we will be having money to help the hospital, with the truck.

Friday we had 8 visitors who came for Harare to spend the day and night with us.  Dr. David Katzenstein, from Stanford University, lead the group and brought Lab and ITC people with him to talk about the start of our research project we will be doing together.  We will be doing Viral Loads by drawing blood and Dried Blood spots to look at adolescent/children from age 5-18 who are on ART (AIDS medication) and how well they are taking their medication and how well it is working with them.  This is a vulnerable population as many are orphans and get moved around from relative to relative and so they tend to miss medication.  Also adolescents tend to rebel by stopping their medication as a way to punish their family, so we want to see if there are ways to intervene if we need to.

We spent time discussing who is going to do what.  We hope also to benefit with students who will come and help us with the Lab and IT things.  We look forward to our interacting.

Major went off this morning to Zvipani (32 kms away) for a men's conference he is preaching at.  This is a mens meeting for all of our local churches.  It will be a great encouragement for the men in the church in our area.  We are thankful for that.

Julie


Baling Box


Our group that came for the Research project


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Covid-19--The world has changed

-
Image
Throughout the world we are all facing big changes in our life.   Many are on self-quarantine; many are staying home because their state has been put on lock-down and all of us are trying to avoid getting this flu. It has hit Zimbabwe.   We have 5 confirmed cases—1 death and 1 doctor at Harare Hospital, in Zimbabwe.   They supposedly have only tested 150 people and as all of you are aware the results take 5+ days.  The tests are only available in Harare. We have few test kits in the country, no PPE and so nurses started a country wide strike today which means most hospitals are totally shut down.   Our local district hospital—which is our only other hospital in the district besides us—sent a message today to not send any patients as they were closed!   With no PPE you can’t blame people who make little money stopping work.   We hope it will cause some action from the government and not for them to continue to be quiet! We do have PPE here thanks to many donations from
Read more
-
Image
 I stopped chemo in mid-February and the oncologist tried a period of Immunotherapy by itself to see if it would work.  In March I started to produce a lot of abdominal fluid (ascities) and had to go to the hospital every 2 weeks and then every week to be tapped to remove the fluid.  They got off up to 8.8 liters a time which gave me a few days relief before it would come back.  It made it hard to breathe without laying on my sides and I couldn't really eat without pain. So, I was in bed a lot of the time. They decided I needed to start Chemo again with the Immunotherapy.  My Oncologist said it was not time to give up yet!  He said the chemo helped before to shrink the tumor a bit so they felt if I could shrink it again I wouldn't have to go for tapping.  I was all for that. He did remind me there is no cure only remission and that I have months not years to live but he felt there were other drugs to try if these don't work.  I am usually not in pain so I am so thankful for
Read more

Visitors and a busy week

-
Image
We started this week by welcoming many visitors to Chidamoyo Hospital.   On Sunday evening, the 22 nd of February Dr. Stephanie Huang from Santa Rosa, CA   arrived with her 2 sons Julian and    Lucas  .   Stephanie who is an ENT surgeon came last year in June and said she really wanted to come back with her sons and so we are happy to welcome them for 2 weeks. Every Monday morning we have Viral Load draw day for our 5,249 patients on ART.  the viral load tells us if the medication is working to control their AIDS and if they are taking their medicine.  We start drawing by 0645 and at 0800 Major comes to do devotions for us.  This has been a special time of encouragement for our patients. Monday morning we welcomed a team that had come to visit Martha and Fanny Nyamutora, who minister in Gweru.   Fanny’s home village is down at the end of our airstrip.   He had a team of American ladies that had come out to help with a Women’s Conference and VBS in Gweru and came to have a nigh
Read more