Sunday afternoon

My phone goes: Maternity unit. My pulse always doubles when maternity call. It is my great area of ignorance (surpassed, some friends would say, only by my ignorance of what goes on before…). Would I please go and assess as lady who is 9cm dilated but the foetal head has not descended.

I warily enter the labour ward – I always feel particularly foreign in here.

“Thank you for coming doctor. This is the lady.” The midwife hands me a pair of gloves. I am a little more adept at vaginal examinations now but could not be described as slick. I think that is the foetal head, and I think that must be scalp caput (bulging of the child’s scalp as it is pressed against the cervix in delivery), what that is I have no idea at all but I can’t feel a cervix rim. The head feels pretty far down to me but to be honest this is only the second time I have felt a foetal head so I have no idea.

I withdraw my hand and try to look thoughtful – like I am an expert with so much knowledge that I am weighing up numerous possibilities that are occurring to me, rather than revving my empty brain in neutral. Luckily Matron walks in. A lady all of us doctors are in awe of. I sidle up to her. “This baby’s head is 2 fifths descended. What do you think we should do?”

She appraises the women from across the room, pulls on a pair of gloves, strides over and examines her herself. She turns back to me. “She is about to deliver.”

“Ah,” I say. “Thought so.”

Comments

Wherever you go...

I pull the sterile gloves over my gown sleeves and look at the nurse. “Please could you…?” I ask shrugging my shoulders in the universal “my-sterile-gown-is-about-to-fall-off” gesture. She grins and slips around the bed to fumble for the poppers at the back. I eye her name badge. Startled – I glance at her. “Your name is Ndlovu?” “Yes.” “But that is a Zulu name!” “Yes!” Her face lights up. “You have been to South Africa ?” “I was working there last year.” “Oh! Where were you working?” “Hlabisa.” She claps her hands for joy, an enormous grin crossing her face. “But I live near there. If you take the road from Mtuba to the hospital I live in a village on the right.” I laugh at the incongruity of it. Here, in the dark at 2am, on a medical ward in an Oxford hospital, working with a Zulu nurse just I did for the last year. We talk animatedly about her home. “Did you train at Hlabisa?” “No. I trained at Bethesda . Do you know it?” “Oh yes – I visi...

Otherwordly isolation

I lean across the reception desk and catch the attendant’s eye. “Sawubona,” I say, dusting off my rusty Zulu. I see you. “Sawubona, ninjani?” she replies. I see you, are you well? “Ngiyapela.” I’m fine. She grins at me. “You must be a doctor.” “I am! How did you know?” “It is only the doctors around here who use Zulu. Even if it is only the greetings.” She arches an eyebrow. “I used to work here, at Hlabisa hospital up the road. I have a few other Zulu words, you know like ‘Does it hurt?’ and ‘Take a deep breath’.” She laughs. And then launches into an excellent impression of an elderly Zulu lady rattling off a series of complaints, waddling across the reception area clutching her back in mock agony. She gets it exactly right. I have come up to KwaZulu-Natal for a few days. Tonight I am staying in the Hluhluwhe-iMfolozi game park, 20 minutes or so from where I used to work. Awarded my entry ticket, I drive into the park. The sun is low in the sky, the kills bathed in amber light. I ta...

Ceza Hospital

I am woken with a jolt. The 4-wheel drive has left the tarmac and we are on dirt road. I look ahead into the hills – the road wends its way high up into the distance. “How far?” I ask Amos, our driver. “About 40km.” I settle back and watch as the settlements become less and less pseudo-bungalows and more and more mud rondavels. The road to Ceza It was about a month ago that our medical manager first mentioned that we had been asked to help out at Ceza Hospital – a remote rural hospital about 2 hours away. Its medical staff (only 8 at the best of times) had been steadily departing and only one remained. He was leaving at the end of May and they were desperate. Desperate enough to accept help from us. As I said – a month ago – but it was only last Thursday that I found myself agreeing to go. Two of the others had been that week. I phoned them to ask what it was like. “There are no words to describe it,” said Nomfundo, “speak to Dr Kekana.” Dr Kekana comes on the line and after humming an...

In Sierra Leone

Search This Blog