My Office

I have an office. It's a good size at the end of a long hallway. It has two windows and a lot of light. It's the second office I have had since I got here. A few months after opening we decided to swap the clinic and administration. My most recent office has a sink in the corner. A little funny to me, but it wasn't until today that I really spent any time in my office and noticed it and noticed the two phones I have sitting on my desk. I have just been dumping things in the room. Beads and paints and other crafting supplies. Papers, a batik I got in Niamey, all just piling up on my desk until today. I finally had time to clean it and hang the batik. I was sitting at my desk going through things realizing that today was a big day. Having time to spend in my office to organize it and also get a lot of computer work done that I have been putting off, showed me how far this hospital has come. Can I tell you how much I appreciate my nurses? They are fabulous. Four new ones were hired just over a month ago and I don't know if I could have found better ones. They ask questions. I am having them read all the policies and they are asking questions. They are asking questions about patients when they don't know why they should be doing certain things. They are doing their job and not sitting down through work. They are critically thinking through things. It has almost brought me to tears sometimes. The first time I got a call from my nurse working on the ward and we were struggling through her French and my Hausa and she finally just said come, and I went, I knew they were going to be ok. She was not afraid to call for help when she needed it. I appreciated it beyond words. Now when she calls we don't even try to talk. She just says come and I get in the car and go down. I think because I worry about the patients, having these new women care for them and not knowing them, I didn't know if they would get it. Get how important the patients are. I think they do. Yes, we are all still growing here and learning every day, but knowing that they will call for help when they need it and not be afraid of calling, gives me peace knowing the patients are in the very capable and caring hands of my nurses.

Cleaning off my desk today I also came across the notebook I was using January through March when I first arrived. I took a few minutes and looked through it. Again, it showed me how much has been accomplished in just a short time. I had to do list after to do list after to do list in that book. Looking through and seeing the things I stressed about back then, just a few months ago, and now seeing them complete brought me joy. The walkway from the village to the ward is complete. Staff has been hired. Lights have been put in the bathrooms in the village. A flow of seeing village patients has been established. Policies have been written. The kitchen has been built and we are feeding our own patients from it. There are still some things left undone, even from my very first list: tile the patient sinks, finish health teachings for the patients, write more policies. It didn't bother me the things left undone and yet to be done. We will get there.

Two weeks ago I threw my back out from a sneeze. It put me in bed for two days in pain. It was during the week on surgical days. I was really anxious about it, knowing I should be at work. I learned a whole lot those two days. First, don't take the random German medication in the cupboard even if a doc says it's ok. He doesn't speak German and has no idea what it is. Thank you Ashley for sitting with me through that experience. Second, it's ok to slow down. It's so easy to get caught up in work, work, work. I came here to work. It's hard to stop sometimes, or to even slow down during the day to stop and just talk to my nurses or patients and to invest in their lives outside of work. Things did not fall apart during those two days. Nurses still treated the patients well. Surgeries and clinic still went on. As silly as it may sound, I learned that things will go on without me even if I am not there. It was a good and timely lesson for me to learn.