We made it through Wednesday! Yay... Today was another tough but satisfying day for me(emotionally and physically) at the Mission site. Since Monday, I have been doing triage and checking in all the patients along with my faithful nursing assistant Steve Middleton... Upon registration, patients get their blood pressure, pulse and weight taken by Steve. Then I interview each person or family and "try" to ask them in Spanish why they need to see a doctor. I have learned many new Spanish words in the last 3 days such as cold, fever, itchy skin, lice, other lovely medical terms I won´t share with you now... FYI, the word for diarrhea in Spanish is "diarrhea" but its pronounced differently and I still can´t roll my r´s and say it correctly! On Monday, we saw 50 patients, yesterday we saw 60 and today was a back breaking 67 all in the heat and humidity of lovely un-airconditioned Panama. Sarcasm aside, it has been both overwhelming and hearbreaking. Today was the kicker though for me. A family of 6 walked 4 hours to see us in the clinic; one of those family members was a women in her 50´s who had a fever of 102 and was obviously severely dehydrated and could barely walk by the time she was seen by a doctor. She had been suffering from a week long period of bronchitis or pneumonia. It was obvious to all of us, we could´nt just send her on her way back home after receiving simple medications. Fortunately, we were able to transport her tonight to the hospital via our team bus for extended treatment. So, this poor women (who also barely understood Spanish to boot) traveled alone with a bunch of weird looking strangers to an unknown environment. What trust she had in us, but then again, what choice did she have? (In case you were interested, it costs .50 cents to see an ER doctor and 13.50 for a chest x-ray). Can you believe that? Wow... If you read this tonight or tommorrow, please say a prayer for this women that she gets back to her village safely and her health improves greatly. That is enough for now, sorry for my rambling... Gracias a Dios for todo!
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