now on to the next thing

Today I officially finished my work on the early infant HIV diagnosis study, otherwise known as the PDHIV study. After 4 months of database tinkering, data entry, data supervision, and data merging/cleaning (aka way too much data), I am excited to take a breather from looking at numbers and Microsoft access. Although I know for sure that data management is not what I am looking to do in my future career, I guess you have to start somewhere and I have definitely learned a lot from the process. For example, a well-structured and functioning database is crucial for easy but accurate entry and therefore solid data sets and good analysis. This somewhat boring data stuff, however, was not all that I was doing (thank god). I also got loads of clinical experience - I can do induced sputums, gastric aspirates, set up and change IVs (not put them in), order labs, take sats among other measurements, and be mistaken for a doctor by people in the hospital including expats (I find this incredibly entertaining). I (re)learned that I liked being in the hospital (I guess taking the MCAT wasn't for nothing), and that working in resource-limited settings and in broken systems can be frustrating for everyone - patients, guardians, nurses, clinicians, Malawian or not - yet incredibly rewarding.

tuckaways

view from the chalet

To celebrate the culmination of the past 4 months of this work, I went to Cape Maclear for the weekend with some friends who work at Baylor (the peds HIV clinic). After spending several hours there a couple weekends ago, I was itching to get back but for longer. Friday night, I hung out at Leah and Jared's house (2 of the friends) eating Indian food, playing Mario Kart, and watching Freaks and Geeks (I fell asleep 1.5 episodes in at about 9 with their cat sleeping on top of me). We woke up bright and early Saturday morning, literally at the crack of dawn, picked up the other friend Ally, and arrived at our lodging mid-morning. We stayed at this place called Tuckaways, a group of 5 reed chalets right on the beach with shared bathrooms/showers. It's beautiful, clean, and totally affordable at a whopping $32/person/night. AND you could pay with a Visa! A weird thing when living in a cash-based economy. The day we got there, Saturday, we just chilled on the beach, went swimming, dove off moored rowboats, and generally enjoyed escaping from Lilongwe, the heat, and the petrol shortage. The resorts at Cape Maclear are situated right in the town/village along the coast so there are plenty of cute (obviously targeted at the tourists) restaurants, bars, and socially places to go with great food and drinks beyond the [insert alcohol+soda] combos, beer and wine. Plus, they had tonic.

yum! fish!

On Sunday we woke up early for breakfast. I had a veggie omelette with CHEESE! cheese is an expensive commodity. We then hired a boat to take us out to Thumbi island. When we arrived, we immediately jumped in and went snorkeling with the cichlids (those colorful, aquarium fish). You could get them to swarm and eat out of your hands by throwing/holding pieces of bread, providing endless entertainment. While we were swimming around, our boat guy, Harry, was making us lunch. He cooked us up some fresh lake fish, rice, and tomato/potato sauce. After eating, we hung out on the rocks for a couple hours and I finally got in some solid reading time. We then headed back to the shore, had some drinks and dinner, and later went night swimming. It was nice to enjoy the water without fear of rip tides, sharks, crabs, or sepsis like I do in the Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay. At 3:45 Monday morning, we woke up, packed up, and headed back to LLW just in time for work. I'm still recovering from that early morning and my sunburn that I got despite multiple applications of sunscreen. Parents, you should be proud - for some reason I really want to go sailing. I haven't found a boat to rent out yet, but it's going to happen at some point.

kids fishing with mosquito nets. guess things i learned in class do happen

Now, I'm back in Lilongwe in between projects and refreshed. I've been working on my PMTCT secondary analysis and figuring out Stata, which I had put off for a solid 2 months. I crunched some numbers and now need to figure out the statistical tests and find some GIS data. As for the next project(s)? I will be a study coordinator for a reproductive health study at Lighthouse (the adult HIV clinic) that is looking at sexual behavior, practices and beliefs of HIV+ men and women and will compare those who are on vs off ART. I'm excited to put my culanth major to work and to have a little more responsibility on a project, though reticent to be waking up a full hour earlier for morning meetings. I'm not sure when this study will be starting, which is why I may also do some more clinical stuff on two pediatric studies (run by my housemates): one looking at TB prevalence among inpatient malnourished kids using a geneXpert (a machine, not a person), and the other looking at cardiac function of HIV+ children with a fancy echo machine and 6-minute walk tests.

For now, I'm just really really excited for my all time favorite holiday - Thanksgiving. Although I'm bummed I won't be home (just 5 more weeks?!), I suppose skype will suffice, and my attempts at cooking and finding necessary items should be pretty funny.

despite its issues, gotta love malawi