We got a call from the school nurse today. Cason’s teacher was concerned that he might have chickenpox since he had a good number of red spots on his face, arms and legs and he itched. I assured the nurse that he had a number of vaccinations including measles and chicken pox something which is not typical in Africa. He returned to the classroom and after school I took him to the medical clinic in town. Actually, it is a pharmacy with a nurse for examinations and diagnosis much like a walk in clinic at a Walgreens or a CVS.
One key difference is that there was very little wait and the pharmacist was there to collaborate and prescribe drugs. On top of that, the bill was 30 Rand or about $4.25 for the nurse or ‘Sister’ as they call it here and 19 Rand or $2.75 for the two prescriptions.
The result was a diagnosis as we expected, of a bad case of mosquito bites. We are learning to expect that in this tropical coastland after three straight days of heavy rain. We are now focused on ways of minimizing the mosquitoes in the house due to the open windows since we do not have ‘air con’ as it is called here.
Tonight we have mysterious oil warming in an electrical outlet that claims to rid the room of mosquitoes. We hope this works. Because it requires electricity we are not certain it will work all night since the power was out all afternoon. That, we understand is a common occurrence.
No comments:
Post a Comment