To continue from my previous blog post.
Yes, I signed those papers, paid the amount for my tests, which was a little over $500 (yes I know, crazy) and we made our way to the hospital where I’ll receive treatment. I didn’t get to reflect at this time, but days later, I thought to myself: “wow I really put my life in danger for money.” It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money, but I would have felt that payment immensely if I agreed to it. It made me wonder weeks later whether I was where I need to be in my life if I was willing to put my life in danger because I didn’t want to lose that much cash. I never wanted to be put in that type of situation again.
So, moving on in the story. My partner’s uncle heads a hospital and we had given him a call and he told us to come and we could pay whatever we felt comfortable. We reached the hospital and I had to climb stairs. Imagine, I felt like I was going to drop dead at any moment, and I had to climb two flights of stairs. Halfway through the first flight I started squatting and told my partner “I don’t think I can make it. I don’t think I can do this.” He told me days later, he knew then that I was really unwell (oh men! I am dying here, and it took this moment for that realization?).
Once up the stairs, with great assistance from him, we were ushered into an office space. His uncle was there with other people. They had just eaten some food and even in my state I could tell it was like potato leaves or something. I wish I had the appetite. They made me sit in a chair and a number of questions were thrown my way and honestly, I could hardly keep my head up and kept dozing off. I mean seriously! Let the exam results tell you what’s wrong with me instead of bombarding me with questions. I can’t even remember what questions they were asking me, but I kept telling them that my head was throbbing. They took my temperature and my blood pressure. Although my temperature was high, what got them all moving right away was my blood pressure. I remember them asking: “how did you get up these stairs?”
Eventually they led me to the regular patient’s ward, I laid on a hospital bed and I could hear the doctors giving all types of medical instructions on drip and tests and blah blah. I couldn’t make it out. My head, as we say in Krio “bin day scatta.” After the first drip, I began to feel like myself again. I could see my aunty who had arrived at some point looking at me. Apparently, the doctor was talking to my parents and apparently my mother was ready for me to be on the next flight out of the country because there was no way her daughter was going to receive treatment in a Sierra Leone hospital after all the horror stories she has heard. As a nurse I am sure she had all types of questions for the doctor, which the doctor (I heard) answered with patience.
Another nurse came to hang a second drip, and this was when I saw what I was in for the rest of my time in this hospital. For the life of her, she could not hang a drip. She burst a hole and it was dripping all over my hand. I had to tell her. She came and taped the hole. It was still leaking profusely. Finally, she went to get the first nurse (who I might add seemed to be the most competent of them) and that nurse screamed at her that she didn’t do it right and seamlessly hung another drip. I would like to add that while all of the fuss was going on with the first nurse and the leaking of the drip, my partner was hovering around worrying and the liquid sprayed and went in his eye. He later says this is why he got what we call Apollo (Conjunctivitis a.k.a. Pink Eye) a day later.
After some more treatment they move me to another room. This room looked like it hadn’t been dusted for a while. The mosquito net was torn beyond belief. The window didn’t have a net and leaving it open brought in noise from the street that made it hard to rest. It was in this room that I got the news that I was going to be admitted for at least 2 days. Oh no. In THIS room? There was no fan or A.C. The bathroom was not functional. The nurse made sure to explain where the barrel of water was in case, I wanted to wash or anything. Night time was unbearable. I could not sleep. Mosquitos were biting me or buzzing around my ears. Plus, the net was dirty and that’s all I could think of laying on the bed. The room became unbearably hot and the light went out. This was what I was in for another night? No way. I was determined to convince the doctor the next day to discharge me.
The doctor didn’t show up the next day until the evening. I mean the other doctors, who I don’t know their designation, who couldn’t sign me off, came to see me and the nurses as well at various hours to give me medication, but I didn’t see my main doctor. In the early morning a nurse came with hot water (thank goodness!), but I had to find my whereabouts in the bathroom, where the place to bathe was right next to the toilet, so great! Look I am a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can take a good bucket bath with the best of them. I have taken baths like these next to latrines for two years so bring it on! I felt better though after bathing the next morning. I thought I was ready to eat! My aunt had brought pepper soup and in the first minute I was gulping it down, but then the flavor started making me nauseous. I put it away. The rest of the time I stuck to bananas and bread, which were the only thing I could get down.
The doctor finally came, and he could hardly answer any of my questions about what their additional tests found. He instead wanted to go on to tell horror tales of when the hospital fought against Ebola and their pioneering approaches. I don’t know if this was a tactic to distract me from the fact that I had to spend another night there, but it all frustrated me so much, so I told him I had a headache and wanted to lay down. He left and I didn’t see him again until the next day. This night was just as bad as the last. There were more mosquitos! How does someone with Malaria get better while battling mosquitos? Also, again, there was no electricity so we couldn’t even get a fan. We were told that the generator was down, and someone was supposed to come and fix it and all types of stories, which as a Sierra Leonean, I was just used to people always having a story about EVERYTHING.
I can’t remember when this next thing happened (my head really was not itself in there), but I am pretty sure it was in the morning because the whole night, no one came to give me my medicine. You know they inject it through the line they have made the first day throughout the day if you have ever been hospitalized, so they don’t have to keep poking you with needles. So, the next day now, this young nurse came, she inserted my medication and I thought my vein was going to explode. I saw the vein in my wrist swelling and it hurt like a….you can imagine the rest. I broke down. I started crying. My partner who was not used to seeing me in this state, hovered around helplessly. The nurse patted my back and said this was normal. No, no, no this was not normal I told her. I told her to take everything out I was in so much pain. She wouldn’t do it. She exited and I was still writhing in pain crying out and pleading to him to go tell the doctor for them to take this out. He did and the doctor came down with the nurse, they took the line out and the nurse massaged the spot that was hurting. That area was swollen for a week after that.
The doctor apologized that the nurse is supposed to flush (?) the system first before inserting the medication and also because they forgot to give my medication when they should have, it had been too long a period and so sometimes it creates a block in the vein and that’s why it hurt so much more. The nurse said that they didn’t want to disturb me at night, that’s why they didn’t come to give me the medicine. That was it though for me. I needed to get out of there. I pleaded that I wanted to go home and with the urging of my partner as well, I signed a release here as well that I was discharging myself against doctor’s orders. I promised that I would come the next day for the last set of treatment and they gave me some tablet medications. Oh! While getting ready to leave, my eye had started itching and I knew I had gotten conjunctivitis from my partner whose eyes were already terribly red. We went home, glad to be away from the hospital, but there was one last scare that I was going to have from this hospital.
The next day I came for the last treatment. I was taken into an empty room and asked to put my arm out and they pulled out a needle, my partner immediately asked: “is that a new needle?” The nurse said that they saved my needle from the previous day. I was speechless. My heart was racing. Wow. This could not be happening. How do I even know how well preserved this needle was? Immediately my partner said, “we are going to buy a new needle.” She told him the price and we got a new needle that they opened in front of us down from their store in the hospital, where apparently you buy everything from medication to needles. I got my final treatment, paid my medical bill, which did not even reach 1.5 million leones (less than $150) and went back home. The rest of the week I stayed out of work because my conjunctivitis had gotten worse.
There ends my health care adventure in Sierra Leone. I was discussing with a friend the other day that there are some questions here to ask with all of this:
- What are the laws governing hospitals and protocols in Salone?
- What are the laws about giving out medication through pharmacy and credentials needed to pen one?
- Are there any regulations when it comes to fees that hospitals can charge?
What about you all? What other questions do you have given this story?
Peace and love © Voice of the Salone Diaspora
Salone Creatives 
Leave a comment