First day in Clinic

Today was our first day in the community. We set up clinic in a small church. The church pews worked perfectly as exam tables! My mom managed the pharmacy and did an incredible job. Suki, Kendra, and Adia helped mom count, package, and label all of the medications. Michael, Dallas, and Mary worked in Triage. Jeff helped out in different areas of the clinic, wherever we needed him. Michelle, David, Faith, Bob, and I all were the providers and we examined each patient. We saw approx 150 patients today. We worked hard, but had a great time. We treated a lot of patients for parasites, scabies, pinworms, and fungal infections. These are things that I haven’t seen very often at home so it is good to get to learn more about them. I had one 10 year old girl that had a history, since age 6 months, of multiple urinary tract infections. She has 4-5 UTI’s each year. This, of course, is not normal in a 10 year old little girl. If she were in the states she would be referred to an urologist in order to search for a reason or source of the infection. But here, due to her limited resources, she can not obtain this level of care. So, she continues to struggle with this problem. It frustrates me that I can’t do more. On a positive note, the children were so much fun to watch and were so excited to get a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush! I have never had a kid in the states beg me for a toothbrush or toothpaste. They were anxious to get dental varnish and practice brushing their teeth. The dental hygiene students stayed busy the entire time. Children continued to show up all day once they heard that we had toothbrushes and toothpaste.