Rural Rounds

Edward is 9, and when he first came in to he ER he was in terrible shape. His dad was with him, and both were falling asleep they was so exhausted. Edward has two siblings and he's the oldest. They all speak French, because that's spoken along the Ivory Coast. I have been thinking of going for two months to Africa during the spring of my 4th year, and this really made me want to even more. Edward was rather depressed and rather in pain for most of the first of the week he stayed with us. He had his knees retapped and his hip tapped to draw off some of the fluid of the effusion that was causing the pain and swelling. That helped with some pain, and we eventually had him on opiate painkillers as well as super high strength NSAIDs. We drew blood for so many labs, and the anemia he already had got worse and we transfused him by the time he left. We did a chest x-ray to screen him for Tb and that resulted in his getting a CT that found a big lung cyst we feared was an infection call