The week started out with a little scare, as Hurricane Felix was making its way to Honduras. On Monday morning I woke up to the sound of hammering as locals were boarding up their windows as they headed for higher ground. Businesses were closed, and as I'll mention later, the clinic was shut down for the first half of the week. By this time, there still wasn't any certainty whether the hurricane would actually make landfall on Roatan, but folks here were not taking any chances. In fact, thousands of locals and tourists decided to evacuate the island and head to the mainland. Perhaps some saw this as a free trip to visit family and friends, although they'd eventually have to foot the bill coming back on the ferry. As things turned out, the mainland of Honduras actually got the worst of the hurricane while Roatan only saw a minimal amount of rain with hardly any wind. Despite the rain, conditions were good enough for us to play board games out on Peggy's deck overlooking the Caribbean as the storm passed. Compared to some of the horror stories I've heard about past hurricanes tearing off roofs and demolishing docks, it looks as though we dodged a pretty significant bullet.
Although the sky was clear with no sight of the forthcoming storm, Dr. Kristen and I came to clinic on Monday only to be given the news that our clinic would be closed until Wednesday. It came as a surprise and a disappointment to us both, especially since Dr. Kristen was eager to start her first day in the hospital. Nevertheless, we managed to quickly triage and give OTC treatments to folks who were patient enough to wait for the news of our closure, though we weren't able to see them as thoroughly as we would've liked. The only good that came out of the clinic's closure was that Dr. Kristen and I were able to spend a little more time seeing and examining newborn babies in the neonatal ward. I got to help Dr. Kristen out by filling out each baby's height, weight, head circumference, method of delivery, APGAR scores, and vaccinations taken up to that point on the exam forms. I really enjoyed interacting with newborns and their mothers, and so hopefully I'll get the chance to do more of that next week.
The remaining three days of clinic went smoothly, with many of the same cases I have come to recognize right away—impetigo, skin rashes, and viral infections to name a few. Dr. Welcome is temporarily on assignment elsewhere on the island, so filling in for him is Dr. Delia, a Cuba-trained doctor completing a social service rotation here on the island. Herself a Honduran, Dr. Delia described to us the tension between Honduras-trained and Cuba-trained doctors. For instance, Cuba-trained doctors on rotation are given two separate stipends, one from their medical school and the other from the Honduran government, while Honduras-trained doctors are given just one. She also told us that there are often problems with hospitals that choose not to recognize medical practicing licenses from Cuba. Dr. Kristen, on the other hand, is a Harvard-trained doctor originally from Boston and now practicing in Washington DC. She took time to explain to me the different tracks in third- and fourth-year medical school and some of her personal experiences in her chosen track. In my time here I have found it so fascinating not only observing the doctor-patient interaction, but seeing how such broad and different experiences can bring doctors together in an organization such as this. I hope to learn more from Dr. Kristen and Dr. Delia in my last couple of days here.
