Back at work

Well we now have a couple of weeks under our belts back at work as doctors. We have felt many emotions during the transition (which I'm sure will last a lot longer than 2 weeks). I have really enjoyed being back in clinic, sitting in on morning report, talking about patients and using the "medical" part of my brain once again. But I have found that after a morning or full day of trying to communicate well with my patients in Spanish I am beat, worn-out, exhausted. Sadly, the other day at clinic I think my fatigue caught up with me and I could not keep my dates straight--saying noviembre (november) instead of septiembre(september) over and over--which greatly confused my pregnant patient who was hoping to have her baby in september (her due date) and not wait another 2 months!
And while I am sure in Malawi many of our patients had parasitic infections--they are rampant here. Itoo succumbed to a one of the wonderful stomach bugs--and have responded to medicine. Luckily I did not experience what many of our patients experience here in the hospital--that when they are sick and not eating--their parasites/worms start crawling out of their mouths or coming out their bottoms. Kind of gross--yes. But super common! Mike even had a patient in the hospital with so many worms in his intestines that they plugged up his gall bladder and the surgeon had to remove his gallbladder along with all of his worms.
All to say, it's good to be practicing medicine and it's definitely interesting.