I almost had to deliver a baby last night. There was a woman screaming her lungs out and about to give birth in the middle of the dark corridor leading to the pediatric ward. The family was trying to get her to the labor and delivery room, but she wasn’t having it. There were no doctors or nurses to be seen anywhere. I went to go find someone and the two docs that were on the roof in the doctors’ residence (one of whom was the doctor on call!!!) wouldn’t come help because they were “not obstetricians”. They would rather let this woman’s family, or worse yet, me, deliver the baby. I was shocked and later really upset with them. I ran home to get gloves to prepare for the worse case scenario (my helping out) and by the time I returned one of the lazy nurses finally decided to come out of her hiding place and investigate what was going on. She still wasn’t doing anything, but I decided she was good enough and I carried on with what I had come to do – feed Vincent (a little boy in the hospital whose mother was also recently admitted for TB and severe malnutrition).
I am not a fan of the nurses here. The nursing students are great, but the actual nurses are horrible. They are not friendly and hardly ever work. Tonight one of the kid’s IVs came undone and was dripping everywhere. There was one nurse around and so I went to ask if she could help fix the IV and her response was, “I’m not a pediatric nurse”. Well, she was the only nurse there and it didn’t take any special pediatric skills to fix the IV. I ended up doing it. Luckily, on my way out I ran into a (very flirty) doctor who covers the ED on Thursday nights and I had him come check the baby’s IV. He ended up scolding the nurse that wouldn’t help me and made her go check on the child. Haha. Serves her right. I think she hates me now though!
Apart from frustrating evenings at the hospital, I had an enjoyable dinner on Wednesday night with the Cubans. We had spaghetti with tomato sauce, fried plantains, and bananas. Apparently it’s a very Cuban thing to eat a banana with spaghetti! It was bizarrely good. The salty tomato sauce and ripe banana actually compliment each other quite well. I suggest everyone try it.
