Progress...

After our crazy hectic day with Ishmael, clinic has been quite manageable, albeit busy. We have been seeing about 25 patients per day from about 8am - 2pm. As a third year medical student, this is way more than I am accustomed to, but we believe we are doing a good job of still managing to get good histories and physical exams while trying to move things along so that everyone gets a chance to be seen and is not waiting all day (many of the patients arrive at sunrise to see us). We are trying to teach the nurses how to triage patients (assign priority to the patients who are very sick and need to be seen straight away). Since the nurses don't really understand how to take a history or anything, we are running on a system when they come and get us if a patient "looks sick" or has a fever. Not exactly accurate triage...but better than nothing!
The main illness we are seeing are upper respiratory infections, arthritis, STDs, asthma (not surprising with the amount of dust!!), loss of appetite (probably due to anemia...everyone is anemic!!), and diarrhea. We've had a couple of kids with dysentery, some obviously malnourished, and many dehydrated. We had one little infant who was brought in to the clinic by the psychologist when he took one look at her. She was 6 month old and apparently her mother had only given her water since birth. She was skin a bone...looked about 1 week old, weighed only 7 pounds and 12 ounces! Poor little thing... She also had a fever and was looking quite sick. We started an IV on her and gave her some antibiotics and bean sauce and water. In a few hours she began to perk up and looked much better, but still extremely malnourished. We don't know if the mother was completely incompetent, or was so starving herself that she had just neglected her infant. We spoke to her in length about the importance of feeding the child or she would surely die. She promised to bring the infant back this week so that we could assess her weight gain.
The afternoons have been spent giving lectures to the staff at the hospital on different illnesses, questions to ask patients when they come in with back pain, treatment strategies, how to suture a wound, etc. And CLEANING!! Ugh...the storage room is coming along....slowly...
Now that we have removed many boxes we have unearthed rat pee and droppings so the place reeks! We have almost completely finished cleaning out the room, all the boxes, broken down bed frames, non-functioning EKG machine, rusty "water birthing bed" etc...all sorts of junk in the room! The locals who are helping us (the hospital staff) although well intentioned, continue to open boxes, shift things around, and place boxes in a new place on the floor. We are trying to explain to them that that strategy does not help the situation, that in order to make this store room functioning, so staff can come in and grab the supplies that they need and not be rat-infested, things need to be organised better...with no boxes on the floor! supplies out so people can see them or clearly labeled, and the place mopped and scrubbed to a shine. We have communicated this hundreds of times, but I am not sure if it falls on deaf ears. At least we can clean it best we can while we are here, and then they can do what they want with it when we leave...
So...good news today! We have been invited by the Pastor to attend a conference this week called "The Development of a New Haiti". He wants us to go and speak to the people about our ideas on how to turn around the country and bring the necessities such as food, water, and health care to the poorest people of the land. There are 250 people from all around Haiti, Europe, and the US attending to listen to talks, hold workshops etc. We are hoping that this could be a good opportunity to make a lasting impression on a large population of people all across the country, who can bring what they learn back to their communities and bring people together for the greater good of the entire nation! I'm really excited about the opportunity! And....I'm not going to lie...about the hotel!! We're going to stay in a hotel with running water!! and a POOL and a beach at the OCEAN!!! And potentially good food! You have noooooo idea how excited Jenna and I are about this! We have been missing running water so much! You never quite feel clean dumping a bucket of water over your head for a shower...and the food (although it has improved in the past couple of days) has been pretty disgusting! Rice and beans for every meal with the occasional whole fish thrown in, or goat meat on the bone...I don't consider myself a picky eater...but in the extremely hot weather...some of the food is quite hard to stomach. What I would do for some vegetables!!! And a flushing toilet...oh what a luxury!! It's funny the little things that we take for granted everyday....
Well, this week should be a crazy week in the clinic! We will be training Dr Ketlie, a local doctor who will be taking our place when we leave. We also will only have one translator this week, so clinic may move slowly! We are hoping to inspire enough confidence in Dr Ketlie that she can run the clinic on her own on Thursday and Friday while we are away at the conference. This will be her test run for when we leave completely (in a week and a half!). I hope she can handle it on her own! Although shy, and maybe lacking a bit in knowledge, I feel that she's learned a lot from watching us these past few weeks, and I'm confident that she can do a pretty good job on her own if she puts her mind to it...
We also want to finish cleaning the storage room and also the surgery room and the x-ray room before we leave...then the hospital will be in good shape. Ready to start up and running!! So...busy week ahead! It's all been EXTREMELY hard work...but I'm proud of what we have accomplished, and I hope that this can all leave a lasting impact on the people of Haiti!