My Love For Foamy Soap

I could handle most of it. I was okay with the smell. It had the classic hospital smell of sick people. What it didn't have was the disinfecting smell that covered the sick people smell... you know, the bleach, industrial smell that covers everything else. All I could smell was sick people. I handled the lack of masks for the tb patients. Here, patients with tb go into rooms with reverse air flow and we wear special masks. There, there was big rooms full of sick patients, all in the same ward.

I saw the lack of supplies. They took me into the supply room with the code cart and I wanted to cry. How do you work like this?
We were just there as volunteers, going around and hanging out with patients. Nothing exciting. Lots of bingo. All of the patients that were physically able seemed to be selling items, necklaces bracelets, that sort of thing to send money home. Completely foreign, but we played bingo on home made cards and smiled.

The one think I couldn't handle was the lack of soap. SOAP. There was none. (okay... noto none. One bathroom had one bar of soap.) We were in a 4 story AIDS HOSPITAL where most of the patients had TB and there was no soap. I spent an entire class my first semester of nursing school learning how to properly wash hands, and now I was in a place that had one bar of soap for an entire hospital. (someday I will tell you my opinion of bar soap, but at that point it was all we had.) We went in and out of rooms. We took care of patients. We touched and smelled and played and then we went home and took the longest shower we could. The next week we went to another hospital, where it was more of the same. Big hospital, lots of people, no soap. No gloves, either. Thank goodness for the antibacterial hand wash. But still, sometimes soap is just needed.



the day after we got back from South Africa my friend Rachael got this weird allergic reaction where her face swelled up all the way. I ended up going with her to the hospital a couple of blocks away from our hotel, where mom and dad were going to meet us. (note to self- want to get in to see a doctor fast? tell them you just got back from Africa.) I walked back with her to the ED and it was AMAZING! It was bright! And clean! and it had that disinfectant smell I never before liked! Then I saw it... SOAP!!! I made a very loud noise and went RACHAEL!! THERE IS SOAP!!! Of course, right as I said that the nurse walked in and looked at me like I was nuts, but I didn't really notice... too busy washing my hands. That is the day I fell in love with foamy soap. I never feel as clean as I do if the soap foams. A couple of months ago I discovered foaming soap from bath and body works, and life will never be the same. Not only does if FOAM, but is SMELLS amazing. Heavenly.
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Last night at work I was muttering about the new soap dispensers we have. They get stuck all the time and you have to work to make them pump, but then out comes the foamy soap that kills all manner of bad stuff, and life is good. I don't know how the hospitals in that part of the world that I love are doing, but I hope they found a way to buy some soap. Someday I will make it back over there... and when I go I will take some with me.