Haircuts... At work

   On July 18 we had an eye doctor come to our clinic to look at eyes (duh) and find candidates for cataract surgery. We let them use one of our exam rooms. It really didn't turn out to be as hectic as I thought it would be. One thing that helped is that we had totally separate waiting areas for eye doctor patients and regular clinic patients. Usually our slower days are Tuesday and Friday but not that day. We were there until almost 5:00 and the eye doctor team was probably there until 7:30. Eight people were selected as good candidates for surgery which will probably be done in October.
   An 11 year old girl came in that day. She was limping but didn't have any crutches or anything to help support her weight. Her lower part of her leg is broken and has been for three months. Now it has several pieces of bone sticking out. Initially there wasn't even any skin broken but I guess over time some shards of bone are working their way out. Her family took her to the hospital sometime after it happened but finally left because she was never seen. When they asked when she would be seen the answer was always "tomorrow".  Now it is infected and still very swollen.

We gave her some  antibiotics to try to get rid of the worst of the infection while we try to find a doctor who will examine the leg thoroughly before just doing an amputation. That is what we are afraid would happen if we just sent her down now.
    Today we had another young child come in with cholera. He was unconscious but not as dehydrated as the little girl we had several weeks ago. The vomiting and massive amounts of diarrhea from cholera can kill a person in a few hours if it is a bad case. We put him on IVF's right away and tried to give him some medications for vomiting etc. but they came right back up. Several hours later he was able to keep down some pedialyte. We kept him several more hours on IV then sent him home with instructions to force fluids tonight. He was still having some diarrhea but was keeping fluids down so we are hoping for the best. This morning when his mom brought him in she mentioned she also had a younger child at home who also had diarrhea. So we told her we would take care of this child, she needed to go back home and bring the other child in too. This little boy had reddish hair from malnutrition and little braids that had obviously been done quite a while ago because it was pretty matted. He also had some fungus on his head. Then he threw up and that got all over in his hair too so Luanna got out the scissors. He was quite a cute little boy with a haircut. I was afraid that the mom would be really upset but when she saw it she just said " thank-you". I had really wanted to cut it but didn't quite have the nerve. When mom got back with the other child she didn't look bad at all. She had had some diarrhea but no vomiting and was still breast feeding well so we didn't even start an IV on her, just encouraged oral fluids.
   The other day I did have to give a little girl a haircut though. She also had nice little braids but then had a large open sore on the top of her head and smaller sores scattered all over. I asked her mom though before we did anything and she agreed that it would be the easiest to treat if we cut her hair.