My final journal entry. Well, you never know, maybe you'll keep getting these from me forever, it's kind of become a habit :) Anyway, here goes.
Leonel has been here a week now and is pretty much settled into the routine of things. I think he was somewhat shocked at the condition of the hospital in general, the pharmacy formulary, and the general lack of lab tests available. But, he is adapting quite well, and we spend several afternoons last week cleaning up the clinic, inventorying supplies and meds, and generally rearanging things to be a bit more organized. So, Charles came back today to a much neater, tidier (is that even a word?) clinc - hence, he couldn't find anything and went around complaining about how it was too neat and tidy. There
may be a minor war of wills between Leonel's penchant for slightly obsessive order and Charles' tendeny toward marginally controlled chaos; only time shall tell who will be the victor. In any case, they seem to hit it off well and get along quite nicely today.
Alissa arrived on Saturday and we have been doing our best to show her around so far. I think we've already mananged to hit all of our favorite restaurants, the dive shop's, the bakery, and yesterday we went snorkeling at West Bay beach again. Weather has been hot as usual, but generally cloudier with frequent thunderstorms - so we took advantage of a mostly sunny afternoon break to go to the beach.
Anyway, Alissa had her first day in clinic today and was a great help - we got the new printer set up, which is fantastic - now we can print to our heart's delight. Haven't tested the 22ppm rating, but it is certainly speedy, and we figured out how to make it print double-sided too. I haven't been able to find the Spanish version of the basic clinic survey on the computer (we just had copies, and now we have only the master), so I just retyped it quickly and now it is in a slightly different format so it fits on one letter size page instead of legal - content is identical though. Now that Alissa is here we will hopefully have time to do the surveys with almost everyone.
I am planning on working in the clinic most or all of the week until I leave on Saturday, so I can get more surveys done and talk to the parents more about my followup water questions. Leonel, Alissa, and I, and possibly some nurses who are working at Peggy's, are going to spend a few afternoons this week doing my water surveys in La Colonia, so we'll see how that goes - I'm not hoping for scientific data at this point, but it will be very interesting to see how people respond.
The internet and phone have not been working since the end of last week, and I'm not sure why. It seems that internet has been having problems all over the island recently, but I thought it would have been fixed by today. If problems continue later into the week, I'll stop by Paradise Computers and see if they can come and look at it.
I will be sad to say goodbye to Roatan, but I am also looking forward to going home in a little bit less than a week - the cumulative number of bug bites, sunburns, and possible parasites are finally catching up with me. Plus, I am really craving some Trader Joe's potstickers :)
Let me know if you all have any questions or any requests before I head home. We're also trying to put together some simple info/fact sheets will illustrations for patients to take home - stuff like scabies treatment, kid's nutrition, how to avoid parasites, etc - feel free to send other ideas you have and we'll try to get it done.
