Adventure to Copan
The highlight of this week was a trip to the Mayan ruins in Copan. Dr. Courtney, Dr. Leonel, Dr. Charles and I went on a wild adventure for the long weekend—it took a whole day to get there, and a whole day to get back, but it was well worth it. It was BEAUTIFUL. We stayed at this lovely little bed and breakfast called Casa de Café—a little out of the way, but definitely recommended. We woke up in the morning, had a lovely breakfast outside and then spent the whole day at the ruins. It’s a big place, and we enjoyed ourselves so much—especially because it is much cooler there than in Roatan, and hardly any bugs, so walking around all day wasn’t bad. There are a whole bunch of temples and statues and residential blocks, and the vegetation around the ruins themselves is also beautiful. We met up with some travelers too--one from Ecuador, and then two Australians on the trip back--which is always interesting. I would highly recommend future interns to go to Copan, although you really can only do it if there is a holiday and you have three days.
Other than our weekend excursion, there is not much exciting news to report. Courtney is very nice, and is staying in the apartment with me—very welcome company, since I hated living alone in the apartment. The clinic is much busier with three docs, and I find that I have almost no time at all to do surveys. By the way, is anything actually done with that information? I sometimes question the honesty of the answers I get from moms (I have yet to hear anyone admit that they don’t drink purified water all the time—although I have a strong feeling that this must not be true, because their kids have so many paracites!). I think that whoever does use to data will probably want to account for this somehow. Also, I’m worried that I’m
not getting enough of them done. How much of a priority should I make them?
Dr. Reena also arrived this weekend, and this coming Friday another doc named Rodney is coming. A British pharmacist will also be joining us soon. On top of all this, Nurse Peggy has a first year resident, an attending physician and another nurse with her right now (and Richard the MPH is still staying at her place too), and there are a whole bunch of midwives and midwives-in-training working at the hospital 24/7 for the next month. So it is a serious gringo party here these days. Peggie’s docs will be working on the community health project as well (setting up this “health promoter” network and training them). We have a meeting tomorrow to talk about the survey questions we are going to use in our qualitative research of health-related behaviors. Afterwards, I’m going to one of the first meetings to announce the program to interested community members in La Colonia (across the street from Peggy’s clinic). Also, the midwives have offered me the opportunity to shadow a bit—and I’m very excited about that.
Also, this week Dr. Jackie has been gone, so I’ve been able to go on rounds in the morning, which has been a good learning opportunity. So I’m very pleased, because I feel like I’m getting lots out of it.
So becides all that, and a few epic battles against the ant infestation in my apartment, that’s about it. All the cases in the clinic this week were very straight-forward. Sorry this journal is so short—more next time I promise!
