Last night I walked out to the front porch of my
room and heard some footsteps. A lamb
scrambled up on her feet. She was
resting on my porch, chewing her cud. She
stood her ground staring at me, continuing her chewing.
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| The Curious Lamb |
Retreating back into the room, I said, ”Do you want
to come in?”
She did not hesitate and walked in to take a peek
but that was that. This reminded me of
the time when I was in Saint- Louis, Senegal.
Upon opening my door of my hut by the beach in the evening, two crabs were
waiting at my door, with eyes popping out like curious, inquisitive periscopes. One of them immediately took off while the
other moved its eyes back and forth, weighing its options.
So I asked, ”Would you like to come in?”
It took a few steps forward, and a few more, before
deciding it had enough and moved sideways heading for the beach. In the morning to my amazement, the beach was
covered with thousands of these creatures waving their claws, welcoming the
waves bringing in their breakfast.
Here in the morning I found that the lamb spent the night on the porch. Seeing me running off, she followed for several yards but stopped. I picked some tender green grass on my run to offer her and she ate.
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| The Lunsar ETC |
At the ETC, the trainer put us through another dry
run on donning and doffing in a cold zone with a Valentine’s heart painted on
the back of my hood. The Medical Office
was decorated with hearts bearing the names of the ETC staff.
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| Streamers of Valentine's Hearts |
Then we had to go for a mandatory lecture on Sexual
Exploitation and Abuse even though I did that online last year.
In the late afternoon we donned and drew red hearts
on our hood, before I finally went in the ETC with two other doctors, first in
the Suspected Ward with only one patient.
The ETC is luxurious compared to Bong ETC, such spaciousness and
brightness. The patients have bedside
tables and the hall which is twice as wide as ours, is lined with numerous
stations, at least twelve, for handwashing whereas in Bong we had two and I
remembered begging for more so we did not have to walk the long narrow hallway
back and forth in between patients to wash our hands. It was wearing to do that in full PPE in the
hot weather. We finally succeeded in
getting two more put in before I left.
There is only one patient in the Suspected Ward. He is Ebola negative and has a history of tuberculosis. The ward is completely vacant. The afternoon has been hot and he has moved
his mattress outside. He is feverish, very thin and has been
coughing. He could not tell us when he
started treatment but stopped taking his medications in August last year when
the St. John of God Catholic Hospital or Mabesseneh Hospital in Lunsar was closed
by the Deputy Minister of Political Affairs because of Ebola related death
cases. In September the 69-year old
Brother Manuel García Viejo, the hospital medical director contracted Ebola and
died in Spain. It was said that sometime early last year, a man who brought his wife to be seen at the hospital had some money stolen from him. When the staff denied it, he put a curse on the hospital. Soon a number of the staff died of Ebola. Our patient said he had
not been tested for HIV. He will be
transferred to Port Loko Hospital for treatment.
The Probable Ward has no patients.
The Confirmed Ward is also emptied of patients save
one. She is 35-years-old women, ill and
weak, but not deathly ill. The rest of
the patients are all lying on mattresses outside, the white tent is too
infuriatingly hot for them. Sullieu, a 12-year-old boy has
been here for 3 days, weak with a high fever, diarrhea and abdominal pain. We asked him to drink a cup of Oral
Rehydration Solution (ORS), a minute later he promptly brought it all up. Gabriel, a young man is similarly quite
stable. Augusta, a young woman has
diarrhea again after it has stopped for many days. Because there are so few patients we make
rounds more slowly and methodically, pausing to examine the patients. These patients have a caretaker who had recovered
from Ebola looking after them; she is supposed to urge them to drink their ORS while
we are gone.
The Ebola cases have been decreasing in Sierra Leone
till recently there is a bump with 76 new cases reported in February 11; the
resurgence in cases in Sierra Leone continues in Port Loko district where we
are. The day we were in Freetown, there
were a few new cases of Ebola right around the resort hotel where we stayed. The
headline on one of the newspaper read: 733 quarantined.
I left the ETC as the sun was setting. In the evening when I opened my door, the
lamb was in my porch again. I learned
that one of the volunteers has named her Shikira. This time she walked right into my room.
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| At the Entrance to the ETC |
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