Thursday, July 10, 2008
Today is Thursday, so we had Well Baby Clinic. Laura and I took weights and temperatures, and compared each baby on the growth curve. We put the underweight babies on the feeding program.
I saw one 13-month old girl who only weighed 5.9kg (13lb), which is way underweight. She was so small and skinny that I couldn't believe she was 13 months old. My heart aches whenever I see kids like that. I hope the feeding program will help her.
Some med students at my school have told me that they wouldn't want to be pediatrician, not because they don't like kids, but because they don't like dealing with parents. During my pediatric preceptorship last quarter, I've seen a few parents that were little difficult to deal with, but most of them were easy going.
In Haiti, parents are still parents. Most of them are easy going, but there are always some that are less patient when it comes to caring for their kids. One big difference here at the clinic is that they come at you all at the same time.
As soon as the mothers figured out that I can speak Creole, they started to bombard me with questions and requests. Some repeatedly asked me whether I had their kids' chart yet, and others kept telling me that they're only here to get their kids vaccinated so not to call them into consultation (they were probably worried about being charged for consultation, but vaccinations are free). Many of them giggled if I didn't pronounce the names right when I called them to line up behind the scale. Then there were some mothers that couldn't wait to get their babies weighed and tried to cut in line. So parents tended to make the work a little more difficult, but nonetheless I enjoyed working with kids today.
Later in the afternoon we saw a 67-year old woman named Acephise who has a huge abscess on her right cheek that had just erupted. I saw her couple weeks ago at Dr. Rodney's office with the same problem (before it erupted), but for some reason she hadn't been taking her antibiotics, so the infection had become worse. When I came into the treatment room, the abscess had been drained (Gavin said it was the size of a golfball), and the entire room reeked of rotten green discharge. I almost felt like puking. She now has a hole in her cheek about a centimeter wide. We gave her some antibiotic shots and explained to her that she has to take the medicine or she'll never get better. She'll be frequenting the clinic to get her wound treated.
After dinner we hung out at Amy's house and watched the first episode of Grey's Anatomy from the latest season. It was a real treat for Amy because she hadn't been able to watch it since she came to Haiti.
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