Sunday, 1 May 2011

 

Over the first quarter of the year, we have filled 3 Fridays a month with new rural clinics. I have posted on these before. Now that Holy Week is over (when everything pretty much shuts down), we are looking to fill Tuesdays with new clinics. This Tuesday, we will be doing a new clinic in the middle of somewhere. We don't know exactly what to expect but we were told it is "a very poor area." A local pastor will accompany us and we will give a report during the week.

 

April was pretty routine and more relaxed than usual with the Holy Week shutdown. We used a lot of that time to do the odds and ends that we don't usually get done and to get things organized. May will be busier with the new clinics and visitors. June will be more so when more teams are scheduled.

 

On an interesting note, many "strange" and frustrating things become common to us the longer we are here. For example, patient beliefs about what strange or superstitious thing caused their symptoms. Parents that would rather let their child die than go for medical help--even if they receive financial help. People not having the common sense to bring their medicine that they are currently taking or have recently taken since most can't read and they almost never have any clue what their medicine is called.

 

Friday, we saw a lady that was obviously severely anemic. Her palms were whiter than mine. He heart was racing at rest. Through a translator, I got a decent history and there seemed to be no obvious cause for the anemia. I suspected a cancer or some other severe underlying condition, so we encouraged her to go to the hospital and get checked out. In the meantime, I gave her a multivitamin and iron pills. We prayed for her and she was off. At the end of the clinic she return with a bag full of megadose expensive vitamins (liquids, pills and injections). Based on the price tags, this cost her over $50. Apparently, she had seen some other doctor that prescribed her all of these things and she bought them. Now her question was whether or not she could she take what we gave her with all of these other meds. We finally sorted out the situation and we strongly encouraged her once again that she needed to get to the hospital to get checked out. In summary, for less than $.75 we gave her a medical consult and two months of inexpensive but effective vitamins and for more than $50, she had bought less than a month of expensive vitamins that would pretty much just result in some expensive urine.

 

Every once in a while, we hear something that is a bit of a shock. At one our longest-running clinics, I was talking to the administrator of the school where it is held. We were talking about how many traditional Mayans keep with their herbs and such and don't believe in modern medicine. No new news to me. What was shocking was that she said that many of the people in the area believe that we just come to do this clinic every two weeks in order to have sexual relations with the school kids. THAT was a new one!