Things are going well down here, and we've been having a lot of visitors, which is always fun. Max's dad and girlfriend were here last week, and my mom and sister just came this past weekend. My family will just be here a few days and then is going to the La Ceiba area and Copan ruinas, and I wanted to check with you guys whether it would be okay if I accompanied them a couple of days in Ceiba. I would be out of the clinic on Thursday and Friday of this week, and Peggy has said it's fine if Max leaves her clinic to work in the Global Healing one so there's still an intern there. I'd also be gone the early part of the next week with Jessica and Neri, the patient and mother I took to El Progreso a few weeks ago, to see if we can get Jessica plastic surgery at the clinic in El Progreso. Let me know if it would be okay for me to take those two days to travel a bit with my family, as I completely understand that I have committed to the internship and that it might not be okay to take the time off.
This week was a little crazy in the hospital on Monday and Tuesday, as we saw 23 patients (!) on Monday and quite a few on Tuesday. It then slowed down quite dramatically, as we saw four on Wednesday and about three on Thursday. Friday we were back to about twelve, so it was quite different day-to-day. At the beginning of the week, the social service doctor was still here and kind of in-and-out, so Dr. Normandin was seeing most of the patients and it was fairly overwhelming for her. I've been interpreting too, as she's still learning Spanish, so I'm always busy between interpreting and triaging. I'm loving all the time I get to spend with her and the patients, though! And she's heard me give the same schpeal about viral URIs in Spanish that's she's about ready to give one herself.
Dr. Normandin, Peggy, and I went up to visit a patient in La Colonia on Wednesday that really helped put these hospital visits for URIs in perspective, though. The lengths that some of the patients have to go to in order to get to the hospital (especially when it's rained and the roads have turned to mud) are incredible, so even if the kid really does just have a cold, it's really important to still spend time with the family and give them something (like vitamins) to walk away with. The patient that we were visiting lived at the very top of La Colonia, and we were practically rock climbing up the slope to his house. It was a 9-year-old with an end-stage abdominal tumor with inguinal metastasis who had been through a number of courses of chemo on the mainland. He probably weighed 10-15 kilos and often didn't eat because of the pain. We're going to try to get something to ease his pain, and the family seemed really appreciative that we had come to their house to visit them. It was a pretty emotional visit and was hard to see a family living on nearly nothing who had to care for a dying son.
Dr. Charles came back from his trip to Tegucigalpa applying for a new job, and things are back to normal (or as normal as they get) in the hospital. We had the internal medicine doctor give the lunch time talk this week, and Dr. Normandin will have one prepared for this coming week. A new doctor (Dr. Jennifer Cohen) came in on Saturday, so I cleared up the third examining room (or more like section) for her to use, which was a bit tough with the ultrasound machine we still have waiting for someone to be able to use and move to a place where it will be safe.
The math tutoring project seems to be needing a new direction. We went on Tuesday to, again, find all the students had gone home because they had too much work. After speaking with the school's director about how holiday season was especially hard for students with exams and other projects, we decided that we needed to reassess the tutoring sessions and how to best help the students. I think that it's hard for the students to really see how this directly benefits what they're learning in math, as a lot of what we're teaching really does give them the foundation for what they're doing, but it's not so obvious how it helps them with algebra or geometry homework. So, it was disappointing to see no one there again, but we're hoping to meet with them tomorrow to talk about a direction to go with the tutoring and see how we can best be of help.
Thanksgiving was really nice - we had a fun, eclectic group of people for dinner at Dr. Patrick's house. We did potluck style, too, and had all of the Thanksgiving essentials! Everything was delicious and the company was great - volunteers with Peggy and Global Healing, Dr. Raymond and Dr. Charles, Joe Soloman (the chief of police), etc.
