Party

Today was our last day in the ID clinic. Fridays in South Africa are half days, so not a whole lot happened today. We went on rounds with the doctors in various wards to check on patients. Some of them were from Monday, like the lady with cryptococcal meningitis and TB. She still wasn’t doing so well, and was actually coughing up blood and vomiting today. We quickly saw the patient with peripheral neuropathy, leg swelling and TB, and we also saw the lady with TB and stroke again. She was doing quite a bit better, but still not so good. It was decided that she would be sent to the inpatient hospital where she would stay for a few months until she was stable and taking her medication steadily. The lady with the TB, brain meningitis, seizures and psychosis was still out of it, and then we saw a new case presented today. There was a lady who was also HIV positive with a very low cd4 count that was in a lot of body pain everywhere. Even to touch her body during the exam, she screamed in agony. To be moved was even worse. I guess they figured she had some type of degenerative disorder, but they were still doing tests and trying to figure out what was going on. After rounds, clinic was finished for the day and we still had a few hours until we were being picked up, so we went to the computers. The nice thing about Jooste is that it is one of the hospitals linked with UCT (the University of Cape Town), so there is a resource center in the hospital for us, with computers that we have access to. Yay!

We had reserved a car this weekend so that we could venture out and do some fun things, so we headed to pick it up straight after work. It was also Avril’s oldest son Keno’s birthday today—he was turning 21 and that’s a big deal here. She invited us to the party, so we went home to get ready for it. I was definitely not expecting what I found. It was the hugest house party I have ever been to in my life!! South Africans really know how to party. We ate before coming not knowing that there would be food there (we thought it was just a late night get together with cake etc), but it was fully catered! Avril and Marion wanted us to get a huge plate full of food to eat, but all of us were way too stuffed to eat anymore. They had a bar tender making drinks for everyone, plus every type of desert you can imagine. Her backyard was turned into a dance club—she had one of those circus type tents up with a DJ set up in it playing super loud music. It was packed full of people dancing. And, I wasn’t expecting so many people to be there! I’m guessing there was about 200 guests—all friends and family. It was so much fun! We were all pleasantly surprised.
Since it is mother’s day weekend and we are going out all day tomorrow and Joan’s original plan was to spend the weekend at her daughter’s house. She thought we were going on the garden route tour this weekend, but because of Avril’s sons party, they decided to push it back a week. Joan was going to stay home because we were home, but we insisted that we could manage by ourselves and that she should go and have a lovely weekend with her family. She did, and was so excited that she could still go. I don’t know why she thought she had to stay with us—she’s so cute! She joked that we could throw a party while she was gone, and that she even had some alcohol that the past students had left behind in her bar that we could drink. She’s very playful and silly. Megan was also heading home this weekend to see her family, so Lauren and I had the house to ourselves. But, we were getting up early in the morning to do the Cape Peninsula drive, so we would be gone most of the time as well.