“Mi fut he swell”
on Shona in Sierra Leone (Sierra Leone), 20/Jun/2011 17:39, 34 days ago
I woke on Saturday morning after having a lovely night out on Friday for Banke, Theo, Alex and Dorcas’ leaving party. (I even went out dancing – shock and horror!) I pottered around the house for a while, and did some work on my audits. Then I realised there was something wrong with my left foot. It was swollen. I had pitting oedema to my mid-calf. It was surrounding an infection from a mosquito bite, where my sandal strap had been rubbing. Thankfully it wasn’t sore, just a bit uncomfortable. And I didn’t feel unwell. In the evening there was a massive downpour so I ended up walking through rivers of muddy water on my way to meet some friends for dinner (it was worth it – the steakat Madam Posset’s was amazing!). After a consultation with Dr Sandra we agreed that I should take some antibiotics for my infected foot.Thankfully it didn’t get any worse overnight. Yesterday morning I hobbled down to Congo Cross to buy some antibiotics (yes you can buy them over the counter….) Now, there is no flucloxacillin in the country. Just cloxacillin (which isn’t even in the BNF!). But they didn’t have that in the pharmacy. Nor did they have augmentin (we don’t have augmentin in the hospital but you can get it in many pharmacies). So I settled on ampiclox (a combination of ampicillin and cloxacillin).I walked quite a lot, although slowly, yesterday afternoon. Today“he don better”. The swelling has gone down and I am no longer hobbling. Turns out ampliclox is pretty good. One of the treatment room nurses offered to dress my wound for me (obviously not impressed at my effort!). The nurses have all said “Oshya” again and told me off for getting bitten and made sure I am sleeping under a bed net at night (I am).(“Fut” is Krio for leg; so the title of the blog means “My leg is swollen”).