This past week has been so busy. Alice and Howard have been a huge help organizing and sprucing up the clinic, however they have been extremely busy setting up the physicians conference which took place thursday, friday and saturday. This conference unfortunately took Dr. Mario out of the clinic, but Dr. Diane and Dr. Vicky and I managed to do just fine. This week in the clinic we had two particulary interesting cases. The first one was this extremely intelligent six year old girl came in with her grandmother who said that she has never spoken a word in her life. How could this girl be seeing a doctor for the first time at six years old and she has never spoken? With the limited resources on the island we had a hard time deciding what the best course of action was for her, so we finally decided to refer her to a recently opened rehabilitation and therapy clinic in French Harbor. That same day a mother came in with her baby who she said was having a difficult time breast feeding. It didn't even dawn on me that something else could be wrong so I finished triaging and sent her to see Dr. Vicky who immediately diagnosed this little girl as having down syndrome. This baby was almost one and a half and no one had ever told this woman that her baby had down syndrome or given her any information about it.Im not sure she left the clinic understanding exactly what she has been told.
Outside of the clinic this last week I have been working to finish my diving certifications, however since I seem to be perpetually sick with the gripe I see every day at the clinic, I am too congested to be able to dive. Hopefully I will recover enough to finish it in the next three weeks! Also on Wednesday, Andrea, another Ms. Peggy volunteer and I went up to la colonia to talk with some women about nutrition while pregnant, nutrition for their babies and the importance of breast feeding. The women seemed intrested in what we had to say but no one asked any questions or had any comments so I hope that everything was understood and that our terrible spanish accents didn't get too much in the way. I understand why they might be confused though, we are telling them the importance of eating dark leafy greens, eating protein, calicum, folic acid and iron. However, I can't even find spinach and broccoli on this island and if I do it is certaintly not cheap. For these women who live in poverty many of the rules and suggestions we were providing don't apply at all. In retrospect, I think we would have been far more helpful if we had changed our discussion to apply to the particular situations that many of these women are in.
Today, was the first time I have seen rain and it hasn't stopped for almost two hours! I am learning to enjoy Roatan more as a local than a tourist and I am loving every minute of it!
