Honduras July 29, 2019

Today was our first medical day. When I got out of the shower there was a lizard on the bathroom sink. He was hiding under my belt. When he skittered away, I almost had a heart attack because he was so fast and I did not know he was there. When Maggi was getting ready to leave, She found a cockroach in the bathroom. We hunted down Dr Tso because Dr Polley had stated before, that in their room Dr Tso would kill any cockroaches and Dr Polley would take care of any rats or mice that show up. After killing the cockroach, Dr Tso said, “I am not a cockroach killer. I’m just not afraid of them.” Maggi, Beth, and I laughed so hard because she has just killed one.

We went to a town right next to the Guatemala border for today’s medical clinic. We set up the providers and the pharmacy in one room, the dentist office in another room, and the nurses in a third room. Caty, Lyndsay, and I are the nurses during the trip. Lyndsay is our charge nurse and the only true nurse in our team. Caty seems to have known how to do vitals which was super helpful. Then there was me. I practiced for the first time last night. It was so nerve racking for the first few patients because the other two were busy and we also only had two interpreters with is. McKenna was going back and forth between Lyndsay and I. When we first had the patient come in we needed her to translate for the name, date of birth, reason for being seen, and to direct them to the scale or where to sit for vitals. Sometimes Mckenna and the girl helping Caty would work together to figure out a word, but it worked pretty well. One word they had to ask someone else about meant mushrooms. So, Caty said ok and wrote that the lady was being seen for “mushroom fingers.” I think it turned out to be fungus. Haha! After lunch, it was slower and Mckenna and I changed how we worked. She asked the questions in the beginning and I wrote what she said. Then I would do vitals and tell her what they were so she could write them. This worked great!

Dr Lo saw someone with an abscess and got to drain it. Then later Dr Huang was able to do a house call to see a gentleman who lives with his daughter and her four kids. She said the guys wife lived there and she was not sure if the daughter had a husband or not. The daughter had been taking care of her dad since he had a stroke a year or so ago. Dr Huang said she had done amazing as there were no bed sores. Over all I think the day went very well and was told it was slow for what we will normally have. It was a perfect break in day!