April 8th, Thursday:
Apparently there was an aftershock last night measuring in at 6.1. Unfortunately I missed it. I'm really pretty bummed. I've never felt an earthquake before.
Same game this morning: stumble out of bed, dress, eat, and pile in the trucks. About the same length line to greet us. Today I decided to get out of the pharmacy so I could have more human contact. I ended up serving as scribe for Marcia. Basically my job consisted of taking notes on symptoms and recording the diagnosis and treatment. The whole process is rather tag team since we're working through a translator and trying to push through the patients as efficiently as possible. You quickly notice the same basic complaints over and over: reflux and hearburn, worms, scabies, fungus, etc. Since Marcia is the medical director she frequently got called away to consult with others or to deal with various other issues. While Marcia was running around we (a nurse, myself, and our translator, Robert) would get down the symptoms and prepare the treatment for the obvious complaints (vitamins, tums, skin cream, etc). Marcia would make the final diagnosis or, for the simple patients, sign off on our assessment. Robert is pretty experienced which made things go pretty smoothly.
She smiled a lot, except for when I tried to take a photo.
Since Marcia was focusing on children we saw a lot of babies throughout the day. Some were as healthy as you could expect in their enviroment and others were pathetically underweight or covered with scabies. One healthy looking baby came in with a cold and Marcia noticed a firm spot on her arm. The mother got a little worried when we were looking at it but Marcia asked a few questions and discovered she had recently been vaccinated. While the translater explaned that this is a normal reaction I pulled out my arm and showed her the spot from my last Hep shot. The mother felt my arm and then smiled, clearly reassured.
The next station had a two month old baby brought in to be given up for adoption. The mother is 16 and is living with her grandfather who insisted that the baby be given away. I heard it all secondhand, but apparently the girl got told off by everyone within earshot when it was discovered that she had the baby's bonnet ties wrapped tightly around her neck. In the end they counseled her on breast feeding and sent her home for the time being until the baby is a little older. Hopefully the grandfather will change his mind. If not they will probably be back.
Back at home we found Betsie doing a lot better. She'll be back to work in the clinic tomorrow.
Final tally for the day was 192 patients in the clinic and 85 in the eye clinic. Tomorrow is the last day for the clinic and my last full day in Haiti. I'm pretty sure the end of the day will be heartbreaking, but it helps to know that the next clinic won't be too far away.
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