TB Clinic, World Food Program, and Football

Friday, June 27, 2008

Once a month on Fridays we have tuberculosis clinic. We have all the TB patients come in with their empty plastic containers to make sure they've taken all the meds. After they've gone through 8 months of treatment, and if their sputum test comes out negative, we do a little graduation ceremony and give them a certificate. It seems like certificates mean a lot in Haiti. So the first thing we did was the graduation ceremony, and all the patients graduating from TB were given a chance to make a quick speech. I didn't catch what they said, but in the past, patients have said things like, they used to rely on witch doctors and never got better, but the medicine they got from the clinic really cured them. We hope that other patients will be inspired to comply with the treatment plan so that they can be cured, and so that they don't develop multiple drug resistant strains.

I got to work with Ms. Prudence for the TB clinic today. Ms. Prudence has been working at the clinic for over 20 years, and she is the head nurse. We'll be doing the mobile clinic at her husband's church this weekend. Since we had many patients as we usually do for TB clinics, we had to work fast. We asked each patients if they've been taking their medicine, check their lungs, and get their sputum sample. Ms. Prudence put me in charge of checking their lungs, and I got to hear wheezing, crackles, and rales, the lung sounds that I had learned about in class but had never actually heard before. They sounded just like I was told, but it's hard to imagine what it sounds like without actually hearing it. I could hear the abnormal sounds in patients who had just started treatment, but those who were well into to the program sounded much better.

To encourage the patients to come every month because it's very important that they come every month for 8 months, we give out some food through the World Food Program. So all the TB patients got some beans, oil, rice, and flour. I had always heard about WFP, so it was cool to see it in action.

While the food distribution was taking place, Vicki, Laura, Evan, and I sorted out some medical supplies in the depot. There were hundreds of birthing kits, which we packed tightly into boxes. Because of the power-line incident yesterday, the power had been going on and off today. Usually the depot is the coolest place at the clinic because of air-conditioning, but we were all quite sweaty at the depot because we didn't have power most of the time.

Afterwards we played football with some local kids. I hadn't played soccer in forever. I usually don't like sports much, but it was a lot of fun. Emily, Vicki, Wilfried, and I were a team, and we called ourselves Team Mango.

Amy and Julie got their power back, so we watched Enchanted at their house. The power went out (after 10pm), so we couldn't finish it.

We're going to mobile clinic at Souffrier tomorrow. I'm excited!

Prayer Tree, Baby Shots, Cleaning, Creole Lesson, and Black Out

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Christine, one of Tim's team member, went back to the States this morning. She's a lab technician, and she was here with us for a weekend and a half. The rest of the team goes back on Tuesday, but she left early because she's needed at work. She's one of the older people on the team but one of the liveliest. She'll definitely be missed.

Instead of going straight to the clinic this morning, a group of us went to the prayer tree. Every Thursday people gather there to praise and worship God under a big mango tree a few minute walk from where we are. There were probably about 150 to 200 people. It was really good to see the Haitian people passionately worshipping God together even though I could only understand about every other word.

Since Thursdays are Well Baby Clinic, we got to see a lot of babies, most of them healthy and smiling. They are so adorable. Carly and Emily were helping out with taking weights and temperature. Sometimes I wasn't sure if they were working or just admiring the babies... jk. I got to help out by giving them vitamin A drops, polio oral vaccine drops, and DPT shots. I used to not like it when babies cried, but after doing a pediatric preceptorship last quarter, I got used to having babies and little kids cry. So now I love kids whether they're smiling or crying.

We had some free time in the afternoon, so we decided to do some cleaning around the clinic. There were a lot of trash lying around and lots big logs with wood chips because they had to cut down a tree in the middle of the clinic to make way for the new building. After we cleaned up the mess we tossed mangoes at each other like "Hot Potato," except with mangos they can actually explode after you drop it a few times.

Afterwards I got a Creole lesson from Wadner for the first time. We just had a little chat for about an hour. I just need to work on listening skills, so he said he'll bring some story books in Creole next time, so he can read it out loud to me. We'll see how that works out. While our lesson was going on, people were playing football (soccer), so I missed out, but maybe next time.

Later in the afternoon, a tree somehow fell on one of the power-lines in the compound, so Amy and Julie's house lost electricity. We had to turn off all electricity for a while to get things fixed. I've been getting used to having stable electricity here unlike in P-au-P last year. I hope Amy and Julie get their power back soon.

A group of us played some UNO and Hilari-picto-pass after dinner. We had 10 people playing Hilari-picto-pass this time, and it was one of the funniest round ever. It's great to have people you can bond with. I'm going to missed them so much when they leave next week.