Again, the clinic was full this week. Although it was nice as Dr. Tami sat right next to me, so I got to see a lot of cases and eavesdrop on the consults, it was very interesting. Of course, we saw lots of colds. We had quite a few scabies cases and Tami taught me how to identify some of the signs of varicella, we had two cases this week.
We had one four month old baby who has come in four times in the last month with diarrhea, this week he had blood in his stool, so Tami treated him for parasites and he finally got better!
We had a girl that came in with a spot on her neck that was growing and Dr. Howard showed us the excellent resource we have of sending pictures to a dermatologist in the states for a consult. He came back with the the same results as Andrew, Mario and Howard, but then narrowed it down to a fungus. It is a nice resource, as we see many skin problems here.
Dr. Preetha she did a presentation on Ascaris and empiric treatment on Wednesday, that was really interesting.
On Friday, Tami and Preetha were pulled into 3 cesarean deliveries and when Preetha went to check on one of the kids, she was stopped in the emergency room for advice on how to treat a 3 month old baby girl in congestive heart failure. Andrew and Tami went to see her and treated her with Lasix and decided she needed to go to the mainland to see a pediatric cardiologist. They decided that she was stable enough that she could take the ferry and busses, and Global Healing would have to fund the trip as the mother could not afford it. Dr. Dennys made a lot of phone calls to make sure that we could get the baby admitted into the hospital and seen by the cardiologist once she arrived in San Pedro Sula. It seemed that everything would work out. The mother couldn’t get clothes and everything she needed on Friday afternoon, so she went Saturday morning and Tami and I went with her on the ferry, she seemed to be stable enough to make it to San Pedro when we parted in La Ceiba.
It was Dr. Andrew’s last week, too, but he left his cell phone number at home on the wall, to call for consults. Dr. Howard departed this week as well. It was great getting to know him a little better and I am really looking forward to all of his advice for getting into the medical field.
In addition, I also set up a way to copy the typed charting and tape it onto the hospitals required charting, which eliminates the task of typing it all up and then handwriting exactly the same information onto the hospital chart. Now I just copy it into a Word document, adjust some of the columns, print it, and tape it onto the hospital form. The Statistics department, said they think it’s fine, so I have saved myself a lot of time and hand cramping, I’m very happy with it. Only wish I had done it sooner.
