Healing with What We Have, Loving with All We Are

Another fantastic day at clinic that was full of new things just as it has been every single day!

This morning there weren’t really any gaps in areas, so I wasn’t really sure what they day would hold or what I would get up to, but real early on, they had sent a couple of patients to one of our doctors without hitting triage first. This is a common practice because it gets the ball rolling a bit faster, otherwise the doctors may wait 20-30 minutes before seeing a patient!

But they had sent quite a few so while it got her started, there was now a line and taking the vitals and chief complaint was again slowing her down. So I went and took the vitals of everyone sitting in line. I didn’t have a translator obviously so there was a lot of nervous giggles and sign language but by the third patient, they were all handing me their papers and rolling up their sleeves when they saw me coming.

I decided to stick with the doctor and see if there was any way I could assist her in her tasks and I ended up being gopher pretty much all day which was awesome! I got to see how she worked, and how she treated patients, and I also did glucose sticks and urine tests and retook high bps and ran and got stuff. It was good. It is hard though. You know in triage you understand what their problem is and send them to the providers hoping they’re much smarter than you and can offer some miracle cure. But working closely with a provider today, most of the time, we were able to give them vitamins and stretches and 20 ibuprofen. I wrote “for pain” on so many little baggies today, and it’s hard to be only able to offer this over the counter medication to address all of their hard-labor-induced ailments.

But the doctor is so kind and friendly and such a strong Christian. She radiates Jesus to every single patient even if all she was able to do was educate on taking their high bp meds or giving them some Tylenol for the pain. She’s an inspiration — I really love her!

I also got to hold the cutest smiling baby while his mom was getting checked out so I’d say the day was a success ;)

After lunch, my students got plugged into triage and I totally felt like a mother bird kicking her kids out of the nest hoping they would figure out how to fly before hitting the bottom!! But they did fantastic and really started getting confident with their machines as they worked through the afternoon!!

After we ran out of triage patients for the day, they all went and got five of their friend’s vital signs and then we were done!! Class was over :(

But not before we called all the church volunteers together for a “ceremony!” We gave them each signed certificates for completing the training and everyone clapped and we took some photos :) everyone seemed to have a blast with that and there were lots of “doctor so-and-so, my arm’s falling off, put it back on” types of comments shot out from their church family ;)

We also gave them each a backpack with supplies and a trauma kit that they can use in their villages and churches. It was a little awkward at first because I really didn’t know how I was going to turn it into a ceremony but it all worked out and everyone seemed so happy :)

Finally, just as we were wrapping up the last couple of patients, I was painting kids faces and one of the local doctors came up and asked me for a consult. A little boy appeared to have something stuck in his ear, but he wasn’t sure what he was seeing so I took a look and it looked like the kid had shoved a seed or something deep into his ear canal. I told the doctor I agreed and asked if he wanted me to get some forceps so he could pull it out and he said no! He didn’t feel comfortable pulling it out! So I asked one of our US doctors if she would mind taking a break in between patients to look and maybe pull it out and she just handed me a pair of long tweezers. So I asked her if I could pull it out (you know, is it in my scope of practice? I got wigged out because the doctor was scared to do it!) and she looked at me funny and said sure?

So I took a deep breath and walked over there. VERY carefully and VERY slowly, I started to poke at the black thing. For a second I got concerned it was a bug and could shatter if I tried to grab it, but then the kid started to cry so I knew I had to move quickly.

I was able to get the seed out and everyone cheered!! It was great — I felt like a master surgeon — all of those years of the game operation must have prepared me ;)

We closed clinic and headed back to the hotel for the night, with a full week officially over, over 1,000 glasses, flip flops, and patients seen (and most of the eyeglass people didn’t come to medical), bruised knees from crawling around on concrete to treat people, facepaint under my nails, and a heart full of joy and gratitude.

Church volunteers who have been tirelessly serving all week!!