Wednesdays are the busiest days for us because of the MDR-TB clinic at Wilkins Hospital. The sisters (nurses) there have gotten to know us pretty well and they are great at calling up patients and having them come in to talk to us. It’s awesome for the study because recruitment is going really well, but it’s quite exhausting. We enrolled three patients and one household contact today and talked to two others. We were not prepared for so many people and we actually ran out of questionnaires before we were through. We didn’t want to turn anyone away so while Salome interviewed one woman, I drove her car to the office to get some more questionnaires.
In case I haven’t mentioned, you drive on the opposite side of the road here compare to the US. And most cars are manuals. It wasn’t a big deal since I drove all the time in South Africa but it’s been a while since I’ve driven a manual transmission vehicle and I was a bit nervous about the directions. Luckily it was mid-day and there wasn’t much traffic and Salome was borrowing her cousin’s car which is a small Nissan with power steering (unlike her own truck which is huge and does not have power steering). I had no troubles getting to the office and back and didn’t get lost at all. I only realized half way back that I didn’t actually have my driver’s license on me though. But all was well and I made it safely.
By the time we dropped off the samples at the lab and got back to the office, it was after 3 pm. I checked my e-mail and worked on the database development until 5 pm when we had a Skype call with John. We talked to John for a while and caught him up on our progress (which he’s very happy with so far) then Salome gave me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to walk to the combis in the growing dark.