In the hospital today I checked vitals in the male ward, then observed Dr. Kudoh on rounds. Doctor Kudoh was again very informative.
A 24 year old patient who suffered from severe malaria, vomited so forcefully that his esophogus and stomach tissue was torn (severe gastritis), causing him to vomit blood and tissue. Apparently, vomiting after food or water intake is common in severe malaria cases. The doctor calmly instructed the nurses to inject two saline IVs, and wait for a suitable donor (family members) for a blood transfusion. Dr. Kudoh also pointed out fine, closely spaced scars on the chest of the patient, which he explained were remnants from a traditional healer. The healer would slice the skin, then apply topical poultices, which could now enter the blood. Dr. Kudoh said that if the young man had been brought immediately to the hospital when he first turned symptomatic, he would be in much better condition.
Dr. Kudoh showed me a post-mortem chest CT scan of Thom Johnson, which showed an extremely enlarged heart. Dr. Kudoh said an enlarged heart is a classic indicator of cardiac failure, and he diagnosed Mr. Johnson’s cause of death as cardiac failure based on this information.
I finished early at the hospital, so I decided to teach at the afterschool program, though I was not scheduled to do so. I had not yet collected the homework assignment designed to gauge the childrens academic level, so instead I taught from the beginning of the text to ensure that the basics of grammar were covered. This seemed to work fairly well. It turned out that only a few students had done the written paragraph assignment, but those that had did not seem to have a great handle on basic grammar. I think I will continue with the grammar basics and move on to more advanced topics if the students seem bored by the basics.
Additionally, I learned from the house cook that the average wage for a working person in Ghana
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