Well, one week over already! I have finally settled in now, and I’m feeling much more comfortable around the island, and in the clinic. So far, I have discovered my deep passion for liquados, the relentlessness of the heat/humidity, the great music at Black Pearl (thanks to the Honduran med student named Francisco and Dr. Leonel for that one) and even some cool hole-in-the-wall places. Just yesterday Leonel and I stumbled across a really cool botanical garden by accident. So I’m really enjoying all the stuff like that, and I’m feeling much more at ease and at home than I did the first few days.
The clinic is going well so far, although I feel like I am always busy, just with taking in patients, weighing them, marking their charts etc. When I look at the spreadsheet with all the surveys on it I’m amazed at how many everyone has done! I had time for 3 today, which is just about the max I seem to be able to fit. And that seems like that’s slim pickin’s compared to how many some of the other interns were doing daily! Perhaps it has to do with my Spanish—I find that my Spanish (like Katie was saying early in the summer) leaves something to be desired. The moms often talk so fast that I can’t really understand them, and I feel very limited by what I can say in Spanish. I’d really like to work on learning all the colloquial phrases, like “what a lovely young lady” to a little girl—or something friendly like that. I find that I enjoy the day at the clinic so much more when I’ve chatted with the moms and made the kids smile a little. I would just like to be a bit more personable than spitting out phrases like “please stand on the scale” etc etc. I’m currently looking into taking some Spanish classes in the afternoons while I’m here, so we’ll see how that goes.
On Friday we had a very busy day in clinic—it was just me and Leonel because Dr. Charles had to go to the mainland. There were lots of impatient moms yelling at me. I’m not very good at standing my ground against them yet—I actually would probably feel the same way if I had to sit on those benches for 4 hours myself! Anyway, after clinic we stayed at the hospital for quite a while to take a look at a very premature baby in the pediatric ward. It was my first time in the inpatient part of the hospital, and I definitely feel like I got something out of it. The preme we went to look at was two and a half months early! I have never seen a baby that small—its head is the size of my fist! Honestly, it was pretty sickly looking. It was born 14 days ago, and unfortunately, the baby is struggling because they don’t have the resources to feed it properly with a gastric tube, so they have to try and syringe food into its mouth—which isn’t ideal because the baby can’t really suck and swallow yet, so sometimes he aspirates the food. So it was pretty sad, and it’s just very unclear how it’s going to turn out.
Also in the pediatric ward was an eight year old boy who had swallowed a stone cross (which was sitting just at the bottom of his esophagus) and a young girl who has had several seizures. The boy had surgery and is doing alright now, but the girl has very limited options, so it seems. There is no CAT scan machine in Roatan (or MRI machine, or even the resources to do a simple strep culture!) so the girl needs to go to the mainland. Unfortunately, the public hospital in the capital doesn’t have a CAT scan either. She’d have to go to a private hospital—and it is clear that her family can’t afford to go to the mainland and stay somewhere, nonetheless go to the private hospital for an expensive test. This has gotten me thinking again about trying to set up child-specific fundraising among tourists, particularly the idea of setting up a stand in front of where the cruise ships dock. Also, I’d like to know more about how patient advocacy has been done in the past—was it only for kids that had been seen in the clinic? How did you get started with a new patient?
A few nights ago we went to have dinner with a family from Alissa’s church (this was before Alissa left and the world was still colorful ☺ ). The family was incredibly nice, and it was wonderful to be invited into their home. She and her husband speak very good English, and were so welcoming! She works for the ferry services that connects Roatan to the mainland, and he’s an artist. They were really interesting. We also watched the Agassi/Blake tennis match on their TV, which was really really exciting. I haven’t seen much tennis, but boy it was terrific. Tied until the last point of the tie-breaker! It was kinda fun to sit and watch the sports with them. They invited us back anytime, so I hope we will go again.
The only main concern I have right now is actually with my personal project. I have explored my survey idea a little with both Alissa and Leonel, but I’m struggling a little because the clinic is actually not set up like I had imagined. I had thought the clinic was free standing, and much more independent of the hospital than it actually is. Since the clinic is very much a part of the hospital, it seems to me that it is probably less visible to the community than I had imagined, and also much harder to evaluate separate from the hospital as a whole. Which has led me to question to relevancy of the original project, or at the very least the target interviewees. Nat and Jen, what do you think? I came back to one of my old ideas after seeing the girl in the pediatric ward with the seizures—would my time be better spent operationalizing the process of child-specific fundraising? Has that already been done and I’m just forgetting about it? I’m getting a little anxious that I haven’t started my project already, so I’m hoping to really begin this week. So I guess I’ll just need to think a little bit more about the best way I can contribute to this clinic.
Anyway, I guess that’s all for now!
Saludos,
jess
