We've survived our first big Roatan storm, which has been a nice, cool change from the hot weather we had been having. On Wednesday morning I woke up to heavy rain out my window and no power (not all that uncommon, but it was out for 14 hours total this time!). Max and I both went into the Global Healing clinic, since Peggy's is closed on Wednesdays, but there was hardly anyone in the hospital. As the rain continued to come down, the entryway to the hospital filled with about 6 inches of water, and many other places were leaking. There were no patients for us to see (I think no one really wanted to travel in such a big rainstorm, especially if they live on dirt roads), so Max and I tried to figure out the Access database that he had found from last year (which seems to do pretty much what our current Excel file does in terms of keeping track of patients). We were hoping that we could get it so that the patients' past medical history could come up when we typed in their ID number, but are still pretty new to the system. Dr. Charles was nice enough to give us a lift home (although the roads were so flooded in Coxen Hole we almost didn't make it!), but it was still pretty early so we went up to Peggy's to see what we could do there. She has a couple of visitors who are working on construction projects, so they put us to work putting in floor tiles. However, there was no electricity still (the whole island seemed to be out) and so it was hard to see and we couldn't cut any more tiles, so we soon ran out of jobs and went home.
Work in Peggy's clinic is still going really well - the staff is all so great and I still learn so much every day. I got to do a lot of interpreting this past week, which I love, as well as work in the pharmacy (also lots of fun). I helped out with triaging some as well, but it gets pretty crowded with two people triaging at once, so I mainly tried to do it when Sherry Kay was busy with something else. Monday and Tuesday were pretty busy, but there were very few patients on Thursday and Friday, since the weather continued to be bad. It was nice to be able to spend more time with patients those days, though. Power was off for another 11 hours on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, which makes it hard to work in the clinic. Hopefully they'll get a generator soon, though!
In the afternoons, I've continued to work on drug donations, as well as help Shelli get ready for the tutoring, which is set to start next week. We'll have a 5-week session, going to the school twice a week and each working with 1-2 students on math. There are a few other community members (American ex-pats living here) who will do it with us, which should be fun. I'm really looking forward to that starting up!
I'm also planning on accompanying a girl to La Ceiba to take the SAT on Saturday morning, as well as going with a patient to El Progreso to visit a cataract surgeon and hopefully a dermatologist in La Ceiba. The patient is about 1-year-old and has an unidentified skin condition as well as congenital cataracts, so hopefully we'll be able to get the cataract surgery done and make some headway on helping her skin condition. That will be from Sunday-Wednesday or Thursday.
