On my own

I've knowing this week was coming for a while now. But somehow it snuck up on me. For the next 10 days, I am the only pediatric HIV physician in Bobo Dioulasso. Leah is on vacation (at her brother's wedding), and Suzanne, Dana, Prof Nacro and the other GP who sees a few HIV+ kids are all in Ouaga today, and tomorrow head to Romania for the BIPAI network meeting.

This is frightening - both because of the amount of work, and because I will have no one to talk through cases with over the next week. I'm not sure why that helps, but often telling a colleague about a case out loud helps me work out what I think is best to do. Today I saw at least 12 kids, (might have been a few more), 4 of whom were new which means a much longer interview as we get as much baseline information as we can. And Pr Nacro was here seeing a few kids this morning. The last few weeks we were seeing up to 25 patients on Fridays. Yikes! I'm hoping there are mostly patients I already know as new patients take much longer.

We have been doing our own blood draws lately... after 3 years without sticking a needle into a kid, I'm getting back into the swing of it which is good. (I've always had a lot of anxiety about drawing blood and starting IVs... i find it hard to focus when the kid is screaming, the parents are upset etc.) There is a downside though... of the toddlers are all starting to associated white doctors with being poked. So once we've drawn blood from them, they're impossible to examine. We go within 3 feet of them, and the wailing starts. The language barrier doesn't help - kids under about 8 never speak French.

This week is going to be all about relaxing evenings and looking after myself; a key to dealing with the stressors here. Other than reading my email, I didn't do any work on returning home. I decided to limit the work to an 8 hour day. So I knitted, read and did some cooking. I am doing yoga every evening now, from a podcast I found, which is great.