Healing Wound, Square One, and Ping Pong

Friday, July 4, 2008

First thing at the clinic today, we saw Madelene, the girl with a big machete wound behind her left leg. We had brought her down from Souffrier (site of mobile clinic) on Sunday. She has been coming here every day to get her dressings changed. I had seen her at the clinic all week, but this was the first time since Sunday that I got to see her wound, which was healing surprisingly fast and well.

Today was Hypertension & Diabetes Clinic, which we have two Fridays a month. Laura and I took weights and blood pressures, lots of them. Some patients had such high blood pressure (around 210/130) that I had to double check to make sure I got it right. It was a good practice taking so many blood pressures.

After we finished taking vitals, I sat in with Ms. Ketlye as she consulted patients. Mostly we just made sure patients were taking their meds regularly, and prescribe them meds for another month. Nothing too exciting, but sometimes it's frustrating when patients don't come for a few months until they get sick because they couldn't afford to come. In that case it's impossible to tell if the medication was working or if we should change the dose. It's as if we're back to square one every time they come in.

As I mentioned before, the clinic has been seeing much less patients since January because of rising food prices. It is sad that fewer patients at the clinic doesn't mean a healthier community but rather a poorer and sicker one.

Vicki and Nadine decided to do some manual labor at the seminary construction site, so they were painting the new library with Gordon and Neil all day today. At lunch there were only three of us: Laura, Evan, and me. It was a bit sad to think that it will be like this everyday from Monday when Vicki and Nadine leave.

In the afternoon, Laura and I sat in with Amy and Evan while they consulted. I got to practice abdominal exam on one of the patients who was having some lower abdominal pain. At school we learned all these physical exam skills, but we haven't got to practice them much, so it was good to refresh my memory.

Welcome Inn, the place Evan and I are staying, has a ping pong table. So after the clinic was over, Evan, Laura, and I played some ping pong. I'm really not good at ping pong (as a matter of fact, I'm not good at any kind of sports involving spherical objects), and I hadn't played in forever. Evan beat me, but somehow I beat Laura.

It was nice to have Vicki and Nadine back for dinner. They seemed pretty exhausted from a full day of manual labor. After dinner, we played some UNO, then watched 3:10 to Yuma in Laura's room. Lights went out near the end because it was after 10:00PM. Good thing we were watching it on my laptop. The movie was pretty awesome.

Oh, did I forget that today is American Independence Day? Yeah, pretty much... I'm surrounded by N. Irish and Canadians, and I'm not even American. And we don't have any fireworks. So no point celebrating, I guess.