Something new

Last Tuesday, Lauren and I officially entered the world of healthcare in Honduras, and I loved it. We had been hoping for a long time to visit a clinic or hospital around here so we could finally learn about the actual health problems facing Hondurans. About a month ago we visited the neighboring town of Guaimaca because there is an American Priest who works there along with 3 Sisters, and we wanted to meet them and see what they do here. We had a great day there, learning about their projects which included a girl’s boarding school for kids from the poor aldeas, a huge farm containing plantains, coffee, orchids, and many other things I’m sure I’m forgetting, and a health clinic. We only had a quick tour that day, but they invited us to come back whenever since they knew we were both nurses. Our first chance to return was last Tuesday, so we took the 30-minute trip there to see what exactly it is that they do. I spent the day with the doctor, a young woman from Guaimaca, as she saw the patients, and Lauren stayed with one of the Sisters, a Nurse Practitioner who saw mostly children in a room upstairs. We had prepared ourselves beforehand thinking that we would feel like idiots the whole day because of our limited Spanish knowledge, but as it turned out we were surprised by how many medical terms sounded the same in Spanish as English. I understood a surprising amount of what was going on, and it helped that the doctor spoke a little English too and was great at explaining things to me. Mondays and Tuesdays are the busiest days at the clinic, and that seemed to hold true this day too. Their policy is to only see people from the aldeas in the morning because they often wake up at very early hours, I heard 1 A.M. from someone, in order to walk a couple hours in most cases to a place where they can catch a bus, and then take a bus ride probably another two hours into town. Then they wait in line for the clinic to open at 8 and hope that they will be seen in time for them to make the trip home again before dark. We saw around 15 patients before lunch alone with a variety of problems, which made things very interesting for me. One thing I realized right away though, was that even common problems here, such as high blood pressure, often end up being much more serious because people wait months before they see a doctor. A woman came in with a likely kidney infection and told us the pain had started a couple of months ago. We had another that was 6 months pregnant and had a blood pressure of 190/110. She had recently visited the Center of Health in town, but the doctor there had failed to assess her at all, and had only told her that she was indeed pregnant- which I’m sure anyone could have concluded by just looking at her. I also learned a little about tropical diseases that are all new to me. We had one little girl that came in, and the doctor suspected she had Dengue, and possibly the more serious type of Hemorrhagic Dengue because she had been bleeding from her nose. Another girl had traveled a long ways from an aldea with her mother and was suspected to have malaria. She was pretty sick looking, and the doctor asked her mother to go to the center of health to have a confirmation blood test done, but the mom seemed hesitant. The problem was the blood test cost 50 lempira, or around $2.50, thus making it unaffordable for this family. It’s crazy to think about any medical procedure costing that little, but I have learned by now that something which seems minor to me is much more substantial here. This family had already spent probably 40 lempira on the bus ride and another 20 just to be seen in the clinic, so adding 50 to that makes for a costly day. At least the medications given out by the clinic are free, thanks to donations from various places like the Catholic Medical Mission Board and Catholic Relief Services. Their supplies are very limited, but the clinic does well with what they have. Unfortunately in a month, they will be losing the nurse practitioner that sees half the patients. Because of that, the other Sisters have been not-so-subtly hinting that they wanted Lauren and I to continue coming every Tuesday. They’ve also been luring us in with amazing food such as lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs and other delicious delicacies from home, which not surprisingly, is more effective than the other methods they’d been using anyway. Either way, we’re excited to keep going back and hopefully learn more about the health problems here and more about medical Spanish which will definitely be useful to us later on in the working world. I’m not sure exactly what they have in mind for us though, because unfortunately we’re much more limited than their NP who is trained to diagnose and dispense meds. We’re just hoping we can help out in some way.

In other news, we got rid of our worthless dog and got a new cat, all within an hour. No fears, the machete was not involved despite those previous instances when we did use it to get rid of certain “pets.” We gave him to a friend of ours that wanted him as a watchdog, the only problem being he knows nothing about being a watchdog… she claims she can train him. From my experience, his only talents include crying outside our window at 5:30 in the morning, licking himself, sleeping, barking at other dogs (which there are a ton of), and smelling horribly. We’re taking bets on how many days go by before she tries to give him back.

The cat is small, and nameless at this point, but it looks like an alien/gremlin, so it may end up with a name along those lines. It eats what we eat, beans, rice and eggs, and it hasn’t peed on anything of mine yet, so thus far it has been an acceptable pet.

And last but not least, our other pets at the moment are the ridiculous amount of mosquitoes that have been all up in our business. They’re big, scary and mean. They like to bite us, but according to Hondurans it’s because gringos have sweet blood. It must be true though, because I have at least 30 bites on each of my legs. Each night I fight to get at least 5 of them outside of my mosquito net. As good as my net is to me, it’s ability to trap bugs in close proximity of me overnight is very likely and dangerous.