Drinking koko regardless

Societal attitudes and hospital life...

We have been in and out of hospital since 8th September. Poor Giovanni has been sick for a whole month and we've been admitted, discharged and readmitted. Poor baby. Almost every 2 weeks we are on admission at 37 hospital.

37 dun kill us ooh! Hmm so here we are again being detained at 37 (detained LOL that's what they call it). Today I just wanted to break down and cry. I get here with the nanny and head straight to pediatric emergency unit. We see the doctors and I'm asked to go look for my folder. The lady I spoke to was so damn slow in looking for the folder, like nothing was at stake (she is probably used to people rushing in shouting for folders during emergencies) she looked tired and unbothered. I had to bite my tongue and just cooperate. So to my dismay and extremely patient face she tells me she can't find our file in the system and starts asking when I first brought Giovanni to the hospital etc.😩Lord help me not throw a fit with this lady. How am I supposed to know the exact date ?  Anyway, I had to run to one children's ward to get Giovanni's hospital ID card and run back to records. She finally found it but she was super slow about it.

So I get back to the PEU only to be told there are no more beds so if I don't mind sharing. 😐 hell yes I mind sharing. The last time we were admitted Giovanni wasn't even sharing a bed but he managed to catch something from a patient who was by us. The sharing beds in a hospital is nothing new in Ghana. The policy is you can't turn a patient away. I told them we would go home and come back early in the morning but they didn't think it was a good idea. I refused to share a bed and so Giovanni and I slept in a chair that night. It was like being on a plane really, same concept lol. This is our second night here this time round and we finally got a bed but the emergency ward is full and now the doctors don't even know what to do. It's a really pathetic situation.It's the first time I came to the Pediatric Emegency and they have a spill over.

I really cry for our medical care here in Ghana. The pediatric emergency unit is just  too small. I wish they could expand it. Knowing how many children we have in Ghana, how can such a central hospital only have a few number of beds at its a pediatric emergency? We have good doctors but lack the facilities to support them. Another thing I don't understand, when your child is on admission, the parent/caregiver is obliged to sleep in a chair... I see grandmas here looking after their grandchildren and it's just not right. But then again what is the solution to this? So mothers put a mat on the hard floor and sleep and others take hospital mattresses which aren't being used (which I'm not comfortable with doing). I'm not too sure if we are allowed to bring in our own mattresses either. Then again we aren't really there to sleep, we have to watch our children should anything go wrong in the night.Our last admission I slept on a chair for 5 nights and got really sick when we were discharged. I had swollen feet and I had a sore throat, fatigue, headache and dizzy spells. This time round I had to make sure that didn't happen and so I did something very naughty. Giovanni was placed in a cot so that we wouldn't have to share with anybody, so when noone was looking at about 1am i also climbed into the cot and slept. :/ Chale I had no choice, I couldn't sleep straight, I had to curl myself up, but it was better than the chair I tell you.

And then we the citizens also tend to run facilities down. I'm here sitting outside drinking some white Koko and bread provided by the hospital (it wasn't bad at all), just catching a five minute break while at it, so enjoying the green grass, perching at the edge of a very dry gutter full of sand and as I sit there enjoying the scenery a lady from the pediatric emergency comes out and throws dirty water just a few meters by me and decides to spit too, another person comes out and instead of throwing her trash in the dustbin she puts in right on top of it, I guess the dustbin is so dirty she didn't want to raise the lid with her hands 😐, then another comes out with her son hurriedly undoes his zipper and he just starts peeing right infront of me, while I'm drinking my Koko. From that point I gave up drinking my Koko and went inside, I was too disgusted with all the things going on around me.  Last time when we were on admission, that was at Nkrumah Ward (children's ward of 37 hospital) right by Giovanni's bed was a corridor and the corridor had a make shift gutter, mothers were throwing dirty water there too. And mind you this is an enclosed building, with just a corridor, I was so annoyed I had to say something to one of them, which we may call the scape goat. Didn't she know what she was doing would breed mosquitoes and then our children would get malaria? She apologized after that and was very mindful of her actions anytime she saw me watching her. But the moment I am no longer on watch, I can bet she would go back right at it again.

These few examples show the citizen's attitude toward facilities provided for us. We maltreat them, we don't respect them yet we want government, CSOs and the likes to provide more. I find this very strange behavior and very disturbing...

It's the same behaviour we have in traffic. Instead of staying in line and moving along in an orderly fashion we decide to cross others, create second, third and fourth lanes and then block others from going in the opposite direction. It's ironic isn't it? We expect government and politicians to do their job but we are also corrupt in our attitudes and daily living. We aren't disciplined, we don't look out for our neighbour, we think about ourselves... Isn't it the same attitude some of our politicians have? I guess we now know where they also got it from. Ha!