Charity begins at home

01:00 am or so...

http://www.bridgetgongol.com/2013/09/the-truth-about-vaccines.html

It was just another one of those calls- hectic! Tens of children pouring in... near-death states. Often, I would just look at the parents, words beyond me, and I'd just shake my head. Best to save the adrenaline rush for something more worthy... like saving a human life.
So it was a night like any other; the ER, flooded with kids on transfusions. Little suckers! Vampires! Malaria, the smooth murderer, had not claimed any lives yet. But I was tired. Yes, above and beyond measure for I'd been working since morning... in this same surrounding.
So I was going to inform my colleague that for the next 3 hours she shouldn't bother looking for me. That I needed to re-charge my batteries or pretend to do so at least. I found her performing a lumbar tap on a 2-month baby. I got inquisitive, obviously. The babe had seizures so she was looking for a possible infection (maybe meningitis). I stood there for a while observing her. After all, she was my senior, a resident pediatrician; I certainly couldn't demonstrate lack of interest. But since she only managed to get a drop of the csf, cerebrospinal fluid (which strangely, was semi-solid), I decided to take my leave.

Cerebrospinal fluid

Only 2 min later in bed, did I realize that my bladder would overflow if I didn't rush to the nearest restroom. Another gymnastics at 1am, but on my way back, I waltzed by the lab where I saw my resident. Somehow, she'd managed to get that one drop of csf on the microscope, and wanted me to take a look. What I saw looked like numerous white blood cells and the reason I knew this was because she told me so. What I did know however, was that this showed that our baby had meningitis since normally, there shouldn't be this many cells in the csf. This made my night!!! Forget all the hemolysing, anemic, blood-sucking creatures in there. I had diagnosed meningitis for the first time just by looking into a microscope...and with a drop of csf. Of course, my badass resident had done all the work. I just came in to learn.

Meningitis   source: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu

Some more csf was collected and sent for further analysis. By morning, we'd found the incriminating germ - Haemophilus influenzae!!! A bacteria responsible for serious infections in children such as pneumonia, meningitis, throat, ear and eye infections, etc. The germ is covered by routine vaccination for babies at ages 6, 10 and 14 weeks and IT IS FREE in Cameroon. The mama confessed that she'd forgotten to take her baby for his 6 week vaccines, which again, made me look at a parent and shake my head. I think she deserved a spanking, but a very sick baby was punishment enough.

Haemophilus influenzae  (CDC Website PHIL Photo ID# 1946)

We put our patient on heavy dose antibiotics and steroids, and scheduled him for the vaccines he had missed. I managed to get my gazillion patients out of the ER, in one piece. No wonder I felt like I'd been run over by a bus. What a call!

Parents please, VACCINATE your children!!! It saves lives.