14 de Octubre
6:30am-Today is my first day shadowing! I'm so excited to finally be in the clinica and feel I have a purpose again. I'll let you know how it goes!
8:15pm- "Oh my Jesus thank You for such a beautiful
first day! I am so blessed to work beside such wonderful other nurse
missionaries and to have this opportunity! How different than the hospital but
what affirmation and peace I feel in my heart that this is where You truly
desire me to be at present!"
"We
started our day around 8am with a prayer outside the clinic with all the
patients in line. How amazing! I'm just so excited to be serving in a clinic dedicated
to Your Sacred Heart!" (The clinic is named, La clinica del Sagrado
Corazon)
This
morning our first patient was a little boy who came in with c/o ear pain. OM
(ear infection) is common here because of the ocean and the river. His legs
were also covered by scabs that presented like impetigo. Apparently they are
called "granos" here. The medical term is ecthyma. Usually it's cause
by an initial mosquito bite that is scratched and is typically +MRSA or +Staph (though
we have no way to test for sure). Ok I feel comfortable, a kid with an ear
infection, easy enough fix, antibiotics and cream. We then moved on to consult
his grandmother (in my head I was thinking oh no, an adult, I don't know what
to do :) fyi I was a peds RN in the states) that brought him in. She had a BP
of 180 something/100, which was an improvement from her previous two days
before of 200 something/ 118 at which point we sent her to the hospital. This
am she was asymptomatic and had not yet taken her BP meds yet. We reinforced
the importance of taking your meds in the am. Thankfully she lives close by we
had her take them and then advised her to return in the afternoon for a
recheck. Our next family had 2 kids that had c/o of abd (belly) pain. The mom
said she had seen worms in their poop. Kinda gross but very common here. During
our consult I heard the RN in the other room let out a big gasp. I was so
curious to know what was happening. Apparently a man had come in gushing blood
from his thumb due to a machete wound! Did I mention all men here walk around
with machetes? It's as common as people in the states with cell phones.
Anyways, he had sliced his thumb to the bone. We gave him some Tylenol, held
pressure for about 5 minutes, and irrigated it before sending him the
hospital. While we can do some suturing
here, he had never had a tetanus shot or probably any others for that matter.
After
this we had a few more granos and gripe. Gripe is the term for the common cold,
however I learned that when people complain of gripe, this does not usually
include cough, mostly just mucous congestion and sometimes fever.
I feel like I learned so much it just one day!
We finished up around 2 and headed home for lunch! It was nice to know lunch
would be saved for us:) I can't wait to start cooking!
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