July 11, 2005

Monday night

   Another great day…

     Our first day of clinic work began with our team meeting at 0630 and having breakfast at 7 AM.  Francisco, our bus driver, was ready with the big bus for our 8 AM departure, and traversed the rough, pot-holed road with grace.  The morning sun was bright, and the humidity seemed just a bit less than yesterday as we bumped along from Matagalpa toward San Ramon….about a 25 minute drive.

     Over the past 2 or 3 years, Missionary Ventures has hosted multiple construction teams to this area, each one doing their part in the building of a small hospital in the San Ramon area.  The first floor of the building is complete enough to use now, and that was the base for our clinic operation today.  Eventually, this hospital will have a second floor and will serve the people of the area, being staffed part of the time by a Nicaraguan doctor hired by Missionary Ventures, and serving as a host facility for medical or surgical teams visiting from the USA or Canada.

     The room that will eventually be a fully equipped operating room in this hospital became today’s exam room, complete with great lighting and a functioning window air conditioner.  (The electricity only went off briefly on 2 occasions today during the afternoon thunderstorm, so the working conditions here were unlike anything anyone on this medical team had ever experienced.)  No sweat!

     When we pulled into the driveway just before 9 AM, something wasn’t right.  There were NO patients there!  We soon found out that the man who was to have spread the word of our arrival had forgotten to do so.  Well, no problem!  A couple people went out, and the word spread like wildfire.  Within 30 minutes, a crowd gathered on the porch, and they kept coming.  We planned on giving out 100 tickets, and they were all passed out in the first couple hours.

     The large back porch served as the intake area, and the big central room as the waiting room, where the patients sat in lines of plastic chairs.  They were taken to the Vital Signs chair, and eventually to the exam room, where, as usual, Clay spoke for Arlen.  They were led to the next room that was now serving as the farmacia, and ultimately escorted back out.  Some team members counted some of the 36,000 vitamin tablets into baggies for distribution, while some manned the farmacia window to hand out the pills and the instructions.  The efficiency improved as the hours went by.

     As usual, some of the patients walked for a couple hours to get to the clinic, and many waited all day to be seen after registering in the forenoon.

     There was the girl with a pus-filed paronychia that had to be opened; she cried a bit as Brenda S. comforted her.  And, there was the woman with an enlarged liver who needed further testing arranged at another clinic, and dozens who complained of back pain and headaches and arthritis pain and worms.  They were ecstatic to be able to get a baggie of vitamins and one of ibuprofen, and to be given just one albendazole worm pill.

     Near the end of the day, an old couple eased into the exam room, her with a slow limp on a crooked right foot, and him hobbling with a cane, and with dark glasses over his blinded eyes.  She guided him.  They reported that they had walked for more than 2 hours to get to us, and it turned out that we really didn’t have anything special to make their lives easier other than a little ibuprofen.  They were happy nonetheless.

     By 3 PM, the clouds rolled in.  Thunder could be heard in the distance, and a storm could be seen overtaking the mountain peak across the small valley outside the exam room window.  The rain lasted into the evening, and, when all was said and done, the team logged 109 patients through the clinic today, and 61 of these were 12 years old or younger.

     As this team has experienced in other poor countries, the people here are friendly and loving, and are much more trusting and accepting than the average American would be.  They were quite willing to hand over their babies to us, and to take our medicines without questioning our judgment.  They played “pato pato gonza gonza” (duck duck goose goose) with us, and allowed us to pose with their cute children for pictures.

     We saw God in the faces of many little children today, in the love shown by parents who had no running water in their homes, and in an old, hobbling couple who trusted us enough to spend their entire day getting small bags of medicines in our clinic.

The crowd gathers on the clinic porch.	One of the 109 patients seen by the team.	Martin makes friends with some of the dozens of kids at the hospital clinic.
Noel and Victoria prepare packs of multi-vitamins.	Clay and Arlen talk to a clinic patient.	Mackenzie enjoys one of the babies at the clinic.