Centre Hospitalière
Universitaire (CHU)
April 2013
Last
day at CHU
I
flipped open my patient’s blue cardboard folder. Groupe sanguin. Blood type. ---
***
The day before, I'd gone to the blood bank at CHU.
The day before, I'd gone to the blood bank at CHU.
It
was the first time I'd ever donated – my more than 6 months straight in Western
Europe since 1980 disqualify me by Red Cross standards (mad cow disease/CJD).
And even if that ever changes, after living in Africa, there's no way I'll ever
be able to donate blood in the States.
The
irony. I can donate in Cameroun. I explained to the phlebotomist that I can't donate
blood in the US, trying hard to make my explanation make sense, without the
questionable undertones of the Red Cross rules rejecting African or
"African-ized" blood. It was my last day at CHU. In a month, I had
watched people die, and I had maybe, minutely, helped. I had spent a night on call learning about how
overstaffed the hospital really is, when compared to the resources they have
for patients. Compared on that alone. The nursing censuses are lower. The
doctor censuses, even, are lower. There were so many eager med students (their
education, not mine), working zealously on med student-thorough, handwritten
H&Ps in French or in English, that they sent me to the resident call room
for an hour or two of sleep. The GI fellow was in there, and she woke up enough
to kick off her shoes, move over, and give me part of the twin bed. I felt
hesitant and unnerved; they were treating me like a doctor (and four months
later, firmly enmeshed in my intern year, I finally don’t jump to attention at the appellation “med student”).
The
transition from dark to dawn is the same in every hospital. There are the early
evenings hours. There are the middle ones that stretch forever—nothing good
happens, then. Either people are asleep. Or they are very sick. It's the slight
undertone to complacency on a quiet night. In the US, we have pagers; if you
lie down, you will be awoken. In Cameroon, there are cell phones, of course,
but there is almost no reception in the hospital. And no one knows who is there.
