Staying Put

Clinic was here on our compound today.

This was a good thing for many reasons:

1. No travel time had to be built into the schedule, so we got to sleep late (relatively speaking!) Breakfast was served at 7:00 (yesterday it was 6:00), and then we had our morning devotionals. About 8:15 we began setting up the clinic area and by 9:00 we were ready to go.
2. There is a small nursing home on the compound and we were able to see those patients first. As I mentioned yesterday, the elderly are treated with a great deal of respect here, and they always get to go to the front of the line.
3. We didn’t have to carry our gear very far. The dentist area and glasses set up in the nursing home building. The medical staff set up in the chapel, and pharmacy was in the dining hall (were the drugs were already stored).
4. The bathrooms here are nice!
5. No travel to get back home.

It was a good thing that we didn’t have to travel back, because dental didn’t finish up until after 6:00 (it was dark!). They saw 95 patients and pulled 226 teeth! One patient had 11 teeth pulled! Our dental team did an awesome job today!

We saw 596 patients today, so our medical team was super busy, too. We were fortunate, though, that Laine (doctor) and his son Sean, and Janet (nurse) and her grown son Bryce arrived from Oregon in time to help at the clinic.
 

The extra hands at the de-worming station (Sean) and in the medical area really helped to speed things up.

Caleb, our pharmacist, took us to a new level today. He compounded several medications today, including an asthma treatment for an 11 month old, and he ground an antibiotic and mixed it with fluid so that a gunshot victim could enter it into his feeding tube.



Ms Joanne distributed 97 pairs of reading glasses and 4 pair of sunglasses, and David and Bill distributed 600 lbs of rice, beans and corn.

Of course, Jorge helped register all 595 patients and Pat and Nicki made sure everyone of them had their de-worming medicine and vitaminas!











Letsbi, our chief cook here, made pupusas, tacos, and enchiladas for dinner. What a delicious ending to an exhausting day.










Tomorrow our clinic will be south of Tegucigalpa, so we will have a long travel day again. That’s OK. Its why we are here. But it sure was nice for today to stay put!