It's been a pretty uneventful week at clinic. Monday Esteban was sick so Dr. Sabio was seeing patients on his own. The nurses tried to give us thirty charts but we had to tell them that there was no possible way we could see that many patients with just one doctor. I felt bad having to do so, but it would have been impossible for us to tend to that many patients and give them all a proper level of care. They ended up deferring those kids to other clinics, so at least they got seen by someone. Dr. Sabio saw around eighteen kids single-handedly and we ended up being at clinic until around two o'clock.
Tuesday was yet another feriago (holiday) and the clinic was closed. Apparently the holiday was to commemorate the British coming to Roatan centuries ago. It was kind of a nice surprise to have a day off as I didn't hear about it until right before I left on Monday. I was able to catch up on my sleep a bit and spend some time over in West Bay, marvelling at how gorgeous this island is.
Wednesday was pretty non-eventful. There were all the usual case of gripe, diarrhea, scabies, and intestinal parasites. There was also a kid with a fractured leg and another with trauma to a finger on their left hand. Elsa did a lot of triaging that day which gave me a change to observe a little bit. It's been really nice to have Elsa around because she is so eager to help out and I think her triaging is more effective than mine because, of course, she is a native Spanish speaker.
Lidia finally returned to work after her surgery on Thursday, which was so great! It was difficult to have new doctors in the clinic without here because they were always asking questions about the inner workings of the hospital that I had no idea how to answer. So Thursday Dr. Sabio, Esteban, and Lidia were all working and things went really fast. I could hardly triage fast enough to keep up with them. We only saw seventeen patients and were done with clinic by noon.
Friday was a bit more interesting. We admitted two little girls, one to the hospital and one to the emergency room. The girl we admitted to the hospital had a giant abscess and an awful ear infection. The little girl that went to the emergency room was suffering from a high fever and seizures. It was incredible to watch the family that brought her in. There was five of them in all: her brother, mother, two aunts, and father. They were all so concerned it was heartbreaking. Lidia had gone into another part of the hospital for a minute and when she started seizing they ran over to my desk with her, shouting frantically. I have so much sympathy for anyone that has to watch their loved one have seizures. No matter how many times I've seen a grand mal seizure it's always equally as terrifying.
So that pretty much sums up my seventh week here. I can't believe I've been here that long! Hopefully this weekend I'll be leaving the island for the first time since I got here and sailing on a catamaran with some friends. I'm really excited for that, I hear it's a lot of fun!
