... A very infected arm... And another tooth abscess

 

This man came to the clinic with a very swollen, red, hot arm. Two of his brothers own a brothel in a local village. Apparently a girl that works there wasn't happy with this guy for who knows what reason, so she pokes his arm with a pin or needle that was obviously dirty. That had been 8 days ago. Around here a lot of people think if something causes you pain it helps to tie it up with a cloth or rag. It looked like his arm had been tied because it was so swollen then abruptly stopped but he denied having ever tied it. He had been poked around his elbow. Now it was swollen almost to his shoulder and all the way to his finger tips. We did get a lot of pus from his arm but it was still very swollen so we put a drain in his arm too then wrapped it up and put him on some strong antibiotics. We told him to return in a couple of days for us to change the dressing. He came back but for some reason got upset when Todd was re bandaging his arm and just got up and walked out without even letting Todd finish. We thought the swelling had gone down some and there was definitely drainage on the old bandage but I guess he thought the swelling was worse or something. So he leaves, with the drain still stitched in and his arm partially bandaged. He has never come back yet. We are afraid he could lose his arm but just today someone who was at the clinic who knows him said his arm is all better... So maybe he continued to take the antibiotics we had given. We don't know...
    Today an eight year old boy came in with an infected tooth. His mom said it had only been swollen for three days but it looked like it had been a lot longer than that. He couldn't even really close his mouth his cheek was so big. I was going to try and pull his tooth but Keith came and looked at it with me and we pressed on his jaw and got a lot of very foul smelling pus out. It seemed there were several teeth loose and infection several places so we didn't pull teeth, just put him on strong antibiotics and told him to return in a week. Hopefully by then the swelling and infection will have gone down enough that we can check his mouth out a little better. By the way... This was one case that Mirlene did not want to assist with. She felt too sorry for the little guy and left the room so I was glad Keith was there to help. She would have helped if no one else was there but since someone was, she got out of the room.
   More another day...