Some appear better than they did last week. Some that to me seemed very sick two days ago have disappeared and are not in their beds anymore. Others do not seem to have moved at all.
It's the first day of the next rotation for the clinical officers, so a number of these white-lab-coat-wearing individuals are clustered around their leaders for orientation. D and I head to the first room at the end of the hallway and start looking at subjects. It becomes apparent that some of these people, patients that D evaluated last week, have not had various procedures done over the course of the weekend. Procedures that D requested in order to clarify their conditions.
I can only try to imagine how dull these patients' last 48 hours have been - waiting - standing in line - then being sent back to their beds because the water required in the pipes within the hospital for the x-ray is not available or because specific reagents/supplies have run out. So it's more waiting. At the moment, it seems, this is an ordinary day in the hospital.
D grabs the clinical officers responsible for the particular rooms and works through the patients, teaching them while assessing each patient separately. There's even a little banter and friendly joking going on. And progress is made and 7-8 patients are discharged from the hospital this morning.I go for a run with E in his neighborhood in the late afternoon. We only see one other jogger during our 1/2 hour tour - another expatriate. At the midpoint of our run we pass a bunch of kids. Three of them - 2 girls and a younger boy, siblings perhaps, decide to join us for a couple of blocks. In spite of my huffing and puffing I notice that they are wearing flip flops and are carrying umbrellas - and are not even breaking a sweat. At the next corner they break off, smile, wave, say their good byes and E and I are left to continue to try to finish our run.
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