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Staying Connected:
Practicing in Kenya can be a profoundly life-changing event. American and Kenyan medical students, residents and faculty contribute their intelligence and energy to the project. proud of him and support him in whatever he does in life. "Chris has a high degree of selfconfidence. I couldn't be more proud of him. There is nobody that doesn't like Dr. Christopher," father Jim Huffer said. "Chris knows how blessed he is," mother Griffin Anderson said. "He's very genuine. We, as parents, always required him to work up to his potential. We valued hard work," Chris wrote... I am working with a medical team on the adult medicine ward at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital. I work with a Kenyan intern and a registrar, which is the equivalent of a resident physician in Kenya. Our team is joined by physician assistants and medical students, both Kenyan and American. We have an attending physician, called a consultant, who joins the team twice a week as opposed to every day in the US. We see approximately 35 patients in the morning. We examine every patient, review the lab tests or x-ray findings for that patient, and make management decisions for the day in the mornings. After lunch, we perform procedures like lumbar punctures (spinal taps) on patients who need them.We admit new patients every other day. In the evenings all the Americans, and any Kenyans who'd like to join us, get together and review radiology films or electrocardiograms. We discuss the findings and teach each other. After dinner, I usually read or check the news. We don't have any TV but we do have Internet access and a projector. The Americans all get together once a week and go out to dinner or watch a movie together. There are currently three US resident physicians here, one from Ball Memorial Hospital family practice, one from IU Medicine/Pediatrics and me. We have a resident physician in Obstetrics/ Gynecology from the University of Utah, and six medical students from Indiana University. I'm never lonely, but I am missing my wife terribly. My main challenge is not becoming discouraged at the suffering I'm seeing.At home, most of the patients who die in the hospital are elderly. It's hard because they have people that love them, but most of them have lived full lives and die of diseases that we can't cure. Here, it's mostly young people dying of AIDS complications or other infectious diseases. That's been really hard for me because I've seen how well patients with HIV can do at home. Even though we're making progress here, it still kills too many young people. You find yourself thinking, "If I could put this patient on a plane toWishard Hospital in Indianapolis, I could save them. I know I could." But they're not at Wishard Hospital, they're in Kenya. It's tough. IU does a terrific job of making sure you can be focused on the work. We have two cooks that provide all of our meals.We have hot water for showers. Believe me, I'm not at all roughing it. Carroll County residents would probably find it interesting that most people are engaged in agriculture here, mostly corn and livestock.Alot of people are simple subsistence farmers. They have had a lot of trouble here with natives not understanding how agriculture works. They simply grow corn over and over, which depletes nitrogen from the soil. Over time, their yields get lower and lower which means they then have difficulty growing enough to eat. We have a program that teaches them about sustainable farming. There is a type of bush here that replaces nitrogen in the soil, and the leaves of the bush contain a medicine that provides prophylaxis against malaria. It's funny-I suspect somebody like Steve Nichols or my Uncle Marion could come over here and teach agriculture and save more lives than I ever could! I went to one of the farms and the workers there asked me if we grow any corn where I'm from. I told them they'd never believe the seas of cornfields in Carroll County. The town of Eldoret is much more civilized than people might suspect. There are Internet cafes all over town and we have wireless internet at the IU house. Everyone in town has a cell phone. People really value education here. The literacy rate is about 85 percent and you see people reading newspapers and arguing politics all over town. They're very interested in the US, our politics and they think that all of us are wealthy. I guess we are to them. They are a very warm and inviting people and beam with pride when you show any interest in their culture and their language. Eldoret has 400,000 people, and probably fewer than 500 of them are white. Everybody stares at us when we're in town. I ran into a middle-aged man at a shop who was white, and he asked me where I was from. I said, "Indiana," and he grabbed me to shake my hand. "We're practically neighbors!" he said, "I'm from Idaho!" He and his wife are missionaries. In last week's Comet, Chris'graduation date was incorrectly written. Chris graduated from Delphi Community High School in 1996. Chris returned home Tuesday from Kenya. |
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