{"id":93,"date":"2018-10-07T21:57:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T21:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.ugandacancer.org.uk\/?p=93"},"modified":"2020-02-08T21:59:20","modified_gmt":"2020-02-08T21:59:20","slug":"patient-stories-from-the-volunteers-rita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/?p=93","title":{"rendered":"Patient stories from the volunteers \u2013 Rita"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Toko Friday, a lead volunteer at the Makerere Palliative Care Unit, writes about a patient that the volunteers provided support to earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rita (not her real name) was a 49 yr old refugee from Congo diagnosed\n with breast cancer which had spread to her lungs. She was married with \ntwo children, 24 and 15 years. After spending several weeks on the \nsurgical ward in Mulago Hospital she was referred to the palliative care\n team by the surgical doctors for pain and symptom control. Being a \nmember of the multidisciplinary team (MDT) as volunteers, we visited her\n and her husband who is her main carer. Though we had challenges with \ncommunicating with them because of language issues, we managed to \nestablish a good rapport with the help of another carer who was able to \ninterpret. We became very good friends and she shared a lot of \ninformation regarding her fears and concerns about her illness. She was \nworried about getting treatment and a cure for disease and feared she \nmay end up dying on the ward and never to see her children again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have money, I can\u2019t even afford investigations. I\n want a cure; I want to go back to Congo and see my house and children\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"Rita<\/a>
Rita with her husband and a volunteer from the Makerere Palliative Care Unit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her main distress was overwhelming pain and inability to walk and \ndifficulty in breathing \u2013 she was bed bound and could not even turn in \nbed. The team prescribed oral morphine for her, which the volunteers \nhelped to get from the pharmacy and also educated her husband on how to \ngive morphine, explaining that this will reduce her pain and improve her\n breathlessness. She was encouraged to adopt a sitting position and \nother breathing techniques to make her as comfortable as possible. \nPractically the volunteers were able to pick her drugs from the pharmacy\n and also help in translating the English language to the patient and \nfamily since they could only communicate in French and Swahili. We were \nable to liaise with Inter Aid an organization that supports refugees who\n helped with providing food and upkeep to enable the stay on the ward. \nAfter a few weeks later her symptoms were managed, a biopsy was done and\n referred to the Cancer Institute. Unfortunately, more investigations \nwere needed before treatment could start but she was unable to continue \ndue to financial constraints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As volunteers, we continued visiting her on the ward, spending time \nwith her and her husband and at times praying with them. They were very \ngrateful to us and the palliative care team, saying \u201cyou are angels from\n God, we are refugees, but God has sent you to visit us and comfort us, \nplease come always\u201d. We continued to liaise with the social work team, \nbut it was difficult to raise funds for her investigations. This was \nquite distressing for the patient, carer and us as volunteers. She was \nthen discharged back to the Refugee camp and as she was leaving she said\n she was very grateful to us for the love, care and support given to \nthem as strangers and wished God\u2019s blessings. \u201cAt least let me go and \nsee my children before I die\u201d said Rita as she left the ward. Her \nhusband called to inform us of her death two weeks later. May her soul \nrest in peace. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toko Friday, a lead volunteer at the Makerere Palliative Care Unit, writes about a patient that the volunteers provided support…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ugandacancer.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}