Medical Clinic Day 1- What did we sign up for ?!

Gorgeous Morning View- This is what we looked
 at while we brushed our teeth

Medical Clinic Day 1

Unloading Supplies

Kaliska  was our "bouncer." 

So they told us that first day that between the four of us practitioners, we should expect to see 40-60 patients. We saw, instead, 132. AND, as professions, the four of us were: me, a women's health nurse practitioner, who really knows about birth control and periods more than anything, Kristin S., a nurse anaesthetist, Laura C., a hospice family nurse practitioner, and Tom, an ER physician's assistant. In this scenario, let's just say four ER people would have been extremely useful.

Precious.

As it was, we all were quickly thrust into feeling like we were working at an urgent care doing family practice. My first patient was a 70 year old who complained he couldn't move his wrist. That quickly put me in my place. (He had broken it 7 years ago and had never had exercise or physical therapy.) Almost everyone complained of stomachaches and headaches and sometimes even vision loss. It took a few days to be able to differentiate between worms, parasites, dehydration, heartburn, ulcers and true infections. Most people said their vision went black after working hard. That, too, was just dehydration.

Hernia? Nope, I think an ulcer or heartburn.

Over the course of several days, we got better and better at understanding who our patients were. Because this was a new village, nobody really knew their lifestyle.
We learned that:
1- They grow coffee. And so, that's all they drink. No water. Almost everyone. Even the kids.
2- If they do say they drink water, they say "agua de maize,"- that's corn water. Because everyday they make tortillas from corn and they drink the water they squeeze from it.
3- They have wood stoves in their houses. And sometimes not even one window. They inhale all that smoke every single day. That's why some of our patients came in complaining of coughs that they had had for 7 years.
After learning these things, much of our "prescriptions" included teaching people how to make rehydration solutions using sugar and salt, drinking water, purifying water, and trying to vent their houses. I told them to please share that information with their friends. I have no idea if any of it sunk in.

Counting out ibuprofen (I think). The guy in the yellow hat was one of our Spanish to
 Q'echi translators. Doesn't he look excited? :-) - He was actually really great. 

We also gave out tons and tons of ibuprofen. They probably all needed a bottle or two. These people work SO HARD. And their joints and knees and backs hurt like crazy. They need a yoga instructor and a couple good massage therapists. We did have a massage therapist with us, who did a LOT of massages. And I told the women to ask their husbands for massages at the end of the day (and vice versa!). They giggled and thought that was so funny.

This is what I look like when I'm listening really intently to someone translating my words.
 There are a LOT of pictures like this from this trip. :-)

All the villagers here speak Q'eqchi. (catchee). Some speak Spanish. No one speaks English. So every single question we asked was translated by our returned missionaries into Spanish and then by one of the bilingual villagers from Spanish into Q'eqchi to our patient. This was not a quick process. It was exhausting and entertaining and was also a lesson in being very particular about the question you asked or you would get the wrong answer and have to start all over again. It also made me die that I didn't know Spanish a little better. But I did get much better near the end of the week.

Every morning started with a health care class for about 15 people from each village who were learning to be the "rural health care workers"." This day was a neonatal resuscitation class where we taught them how to do CPR on babies and suction their noses. It's fun to try to teach suctioning to people who have never seen a bulb syringe. And it seems so simple to us. The workers were so cute and excited and interested. I really had fun with my little group. I even made some jokes, and I think they mostly got through. I really liked to make everyone laugh, and it was hard to know that I had to depend on 2 other people to translate my meaning! :-) There was a lot of gesturing and charades this week!

Kristin S. 

"Is the chest rising?"

Yes, I was very concerned. :-) This is my "mom" face. 

The purple shirt guy is 100. Everybody wanted their picture taken with him. He was sad because his hearing wasn't as good as it used to be. And sad we couldn't do anything about it!! Sorry, dude, you're 100!!