Week of Sunday, July 27 to Sunday, August 3rd
The beginning of this week has been a lot less hectic and crazy than last week. Last week started sin el doctor Gross and con una emergencia; a little girl with internal bleeding had all the doctors occupied for about 3 hours. I was grabbed and almost literally dragged to the laboratory to translate for Alice who was desperately trying to get blood for the girl. It was pretty scary trying to understand why we were being denied (ended up being a lot of bureaucratic filling out of forms) with noise and chaos surrounding the already scorching hospital. Not to mention, as I opened the door to the lab, I almost got nailed by a flying droplet of blood! After finally getting the order in for the blood, I went back to the clinic, where two children had puked all over the hallway, and I had to suck in my stomach as to keep myself from puking from the stench. I swear it was fever day because there were at least 5 children with fevers greater than 101. At least that insane day ended on a good note-the premie came in for a check up and seemed to be doing really well.
Tuesday didn't prove to be any less eventful; a baby girl in the waiting hall began to go into febrile seizures and had to be whisked away to the ER. I stood there with the mother, trying to comfort her as much as possible as she was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably. My heart absolutely broke for her.
The rest of the week was a lot milder; a lot of URIs and a lot of the popular chief complaint here on the island, "no quiere comer comida! solo dulces!" I've seen Dra. Laura get flustered multiple times this week trying to explain that antibiotics don't work for viruses, and it gets me thinking about the patient's perception of their quality of care. Here, as well as in the United States, parents feel more satisfied when they leave the doctor's with some sort of medication or injection. When I see empty handed parents leave with a quizzical unsatisfied look on their face, I wonder if they lose faith in the care their doctor's provide, or even in their doctor's education. I wonder what other implications arise, specifically and especialy in this Global Healing clinic where the patient-provider relationship is already tainted by a language barrier and a cultural distrust.
The orphanage has been wonderful times up until Wednesday. Shenice, who appears to be the sweetest girl (and super bright as well) did not take her nap and I feared for my life (exaggeration of course) as she threw the HUGEST temper tantrum I've ever seen in my ENTIRE life! We had to end the lesson early and calm her down because she stabbed the table pretty forcefully (and we weren't about to let her use that same force on somebody's eye).
A new resident came in this week- Dra. Srit Tiyyagura, a co-resident of Dra. Laura's from NYU. She came just in time for the Trauma Conference, which had a good turn-out. The conference was all in Spanish, and most of the Global Healing team could understand most of it if focusing at the utmost intensity possible. All in all, I'd say it was a success.
Sunday I spent my day at West Bay Beach again, and like always, it was superbly lovely. Tomorrow will mark my fourth week at the hospital!
