As many have said before, we started our internships on Monday. I am interning at Beautiful Gate, a group home for children who have circumstances that prevent them from living with their parents or other family. About 3/4ths of the children are also suffering from Hiv/aids. Going into the experience, all we knew was that we’d be working with the head nurse. The story begins Monday morning, day one of our adventure…
We pulled in to the gate around 9:30 am to find Nokuzola (the nurse we're working with) waiting in the parking lot for us. She immediately informed us we'd being going to "the clinic" for the day. And that was all the information we got before loading into a car and driving to said clinic. Within minutes of walking through the door I was assigned to the room where all the children check in. This consists of them getting weighed, being measured, and getting their temperatures taken.
At about 10:30, the nurse I was working with told me I was free to go because there would be no more children checking in. With no time to be confused about how check in could possibly be complete so early in the day, I was instructed to go sit in with a doctor seeing patients. I walked in to find the doctor busy with a young girl and her dad. Within 10 minutes the father confessed that he has been HIV positive for the past 8 years and has never received treatment, despite that fact that it's free with the medicaid he gets through his work. I was shocked. 20 minutes after meeting that man, I found out the clinic we were at is strictly an ARV clinic, meaning that every patient is suffering from HIV/aids. The 2nd doctor I shadowed, Claire, moved to Cape Town 4 years ago and has been working at the clinic ever since. She sees about 50 patients a day, and has almost 500 patients total. They are all children under the age of 10 living with the disease.
I will never forget one patient's story, a darling little girl who I checked in that morning and then sat in on her appointment with the doctor later that day. She had beautiful black braids pulled back into a ponytail, and was wearing unquestionably the cutest outfit I've seen since arriving. Her contagious smile covered up the fact that her limbs were smaller than those of some toddlers. Both her and the doctor walked in and sat down, pausing their conversation as if someone was following them in. After a minute of silence the doctor finally asked, "Where's your grandpa? Is he coming?" She shook her head, no. The doctor goes, "Why? Is he at work?" No, she begins, he just didn't want to come. The doctor basically just shrugged the comment off and began asking her questions about her medications. The doctors use this booklet which outlines all the different ARV (antiretroviral) meds available to quiz the parents on the dosages and other things to make sure the drugs are being administered correctly to the children. Claire asked her to point out which meds she was taking and how much of each she took both morning and night. I watched in awe as this 9 year old correctly pointed to her drugs and told her each of their dosages. All without hesitation. Claire then asked the girl if she knew why she was taking the medications. They little girl looked down at her lap, was silent for about 30 seconds, and then replied, "Because I'm HIV positive." When she looked up their were tears streaming down her face. I wanted so entirely bad to jump up and go hug her and tell her everything would be okay, but instead I had to just sit there next to the doctor pretending I wasn't about to burst into tears myself. I later went on to find out that she was also suffering from muscular dystrophy, and that her mother had died a year earlier and her grandfather was her only family left.
And that was my first day. The next two days were spent at Beautiful Gate and consisted mostly of preparing all the medication the children take each morning and night. The afternoons mostly included playing with the children living there, something that has been tons of fun. I can’t wait to see what next week has in store for us
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