Global Health Medical Campaign

For the past week and a half we have been helping to translate for the Global Health medical campaign. We are all pretending to to sick in the picture to the left.

I worked mainly in triage, which means I took medical history and noted symptoms. It was actually pretty interesting. I got to talk to a lot of people and I learned a lot about what different symptoms could mean. For example, if someone is exhibiting excessive thirst, excessive urination and has recently lost weight, those are symptoms of diabetes. I also learned a lot about urinary tract infections/vaginal infections. Which I could have done without.

Triage would be the first to start (which means I had to wake up at 6:30am everyday to make breakfast at 7am to get to the clinic by 8am) and finish first, which means I got to give people breaks in the doctors' consult rooms. I liked getting to see patients all the way through. Plus, it means I got to see some really interesting medical conditions/procedures.

My nurse Jillian and I. And a cute little woman from the Sierra.

 

Interesting phrases I learned (literal translation, what it really means):
- Me cuido = I take care of myself = I am on birth control
- Ya no me enfermo = I don't get sick anymore = I no longer menstruate
- Me hormegeo = I have ants = I feel pins and needles

Juliane with Brian, the little boy with Progeria.

Interesting (although terribly sad) stuff I got to see:
- A HUGE groin hernia that was close to incarceration, which means that the abdominal wall is close to pinching off the intestine which would kill it (which leads to death)
- Hemorrhoids
- Prolapsed uterus (which the GYN fixed with a pessary, which is a small round plastic thing that is placed in the uterus to hold it up)
- Two different kids with TWO thumbs on one hand
- Minor foot surgery to remove really ingrown toe nails
- A huge mass on the side of a man's face (we had a lot of body masses)
- A child with cerebral palsy
- A child with progeria  (a REALLY rare disease where you age very rapidly)


And the best one: I got to help one of the doctors drain someone's finger of pus. It was an old woman who had an infected finger. We didn't have any anesthesia, so I held her finger still for the doctor to cut into with a scalpel, and comforted her. I got her talking about her kids, and I put my arm around her and help her tight so she would concentrate on that pressure instead of her finger. She was very brave. She didn't cry, although I am sure she wanted to since she was being sliced into without anesthesia.

For the most part it was really fun, but there were some really frustrating parts. Mainly, miscommunication...or their decision to ignore my questions. Still don't know which. Here are some sample conversations of what happened with pretty much every patient:

Me: Are you taking any medication?
Patient: No. None.
Me: Nothing? Vitamins? For pain? Nothing?
Patient: Yes, nothing nothing.
(a few questions later)
Me: Do you have high blood pressure?
Patient: Yes, I take Enalapril for my blood pressure.

Me: How long have you had this problem?
Patient 1&2: Ohhh TIEMPO! (some TIME!)
Me: For how long?
Patient 1: 5 years
Patient 2: 2 months
...so by WOOO TIEMPO, you mean any rate of time? Good. Great. Thanks for the clear answer.

Me: What medication are you taking?
Patient: Ohh and my kidneys hurt...
Me: SENORA, what medications are you taking?
Patient: Oh si Senorita...and my head hurts...
Me: Senora! LISTEN TO ME! What medications are you taking?
Patient: Oh si, Senorita linda...and my legs hurt...
Me: Ok Jillian its time to get this one out of here.

We also helped teach a class on how to heal babies breath when they are first born (which we were definitely unqualified to teach). I am including this in this post mostly so I can include this picture of Tara with our training Peruvian baby, which is filled with water to make it seem lifelike.

So at the end of the week, we were all in need of a little fun. We went to a cock fight, which was terrifying and awful, and then we all went out of a beer. Which is where this happened:

This is what happens when I have to work 12 hour days without a siesta. No idea who the 4-wheeler belongs to.

I can't wait for the next campaign in August!

Use me, anyway.

I fall short of my own ideals over and over. Yet despite the certainty of my unworthiness, I feel the spirit urging me to venture forth again.

So God, I ask you to use me, anyway.
Take my fears and use me, anyway.
Take my failures and use me, anyway.
Take my arrogance and use me, anyway.
Take my guilt and use me, anyway.
Take my confusion and use me, anyway.
Take my regret and use me, anyway.
I offer all myself to you.
Use me to serve many or few.
In pain or in joy.
Use me as you will.
- Open the Door, by Joyce Rupp

A Night in Paccha

Caitlin, Jonathan, Leibo (a graduated Peace Corp volunteer) and I went to Paccha to attend a town dance that Juliane helped to plan. Paccha is considered "campo" which more or less means a small agricultural community that is part of Chulu, but not within city limits. I was somewhat frightened, but very enamored with campo life. Especially when I woke up the next morning and went outside to go to the bathroom. I thought this video would give you all a good idea about how I felt/what campo life is like.

NamNams

Weird animal body parts I have eaten (and for the most part enjoyed) in Peru: cow intestine (gross), duck liver (gross), coz liver (yummy), and the newest addition, cow heart! Called anticucho. Which is DELICIOUS. It tastes like super tender steak. Next of the list: fried chicken feet.

Raw cow heart.

Mmm.

Sad Realities.

Today at San Jose Obrero, Irma and I went through expired medicine. In the States, that would consist of looking at the date, and throwing away any medicine that is no longer usable. In Peru, that consists of looking at the date, pushing all the pills out of their packaging/dumping all the liquids and powders into a bowl, throwing the pills, liquids, and powders into the sewer, and ripping/poking holes in the packaging. This is done because people go through trash here pretty routinely, and if they find pills they will use them, even if they aren't positive what the pills treat or if they are expired; some of the materially poor here simply don't have enough for any method of health care.

There is so much love, life, and joy here in Chulu, but there is also a kind of poverty that gives a new meaning to the definition of a need and a want for me. It is dejecting and inspiring at the same time. What Chulucanans lack in plata ($$$), the surely make up for in spirit, faith and community. That, at least, is what I try and focus on when I have to look the realities of the poverty in the eye.

Irma and me at work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expired vials for injections.

Empty pill packages.

Expired pills.

Empty/destroyed medical containers and expired pills.

DOFF Days

Every week one of us in in charge of a DOFF activity (DOFF = Day of Family Fun). Last weekend was my turn and I decided it would be nice to do some sort of craft that we could take home at the end of the year to remember our time together. Villanova had left us some magazines way back in March that we had read and re-read, so I got some Elmer's glue and some fun, sparkly glue, and we made magazine frames by rolling up individual pages and gluing them around a picture of the four of us on a piece of cardboard. They all turned out very differently, and I think relfect our individual personalities well.

Our (almost) finished frames.

Yay all done!

Yasilo Beach, Paita Peru!

Me, Tara, and Caitlin went on a day trip to the beach with some of our Peace Corp friends on Sunday. Jonathan, who lives in Chulu with us, Juliane, who lives in Paccha (a farm community outside of the city), and Eric, who lives in Piura, are friends we hang out with pretty regularly. Especially Jonathan since he works at the Ceo Betania (where I teach yoga) too. There is a small beach to lay out which is surrounded by really beautiful old boats used for fishing. Just wanted to post something beautiful/uplifting after the last two kind of sad posts!

Day started off a little cloudy, but warmed up quickly.

Check out the man on the raft in the background. Robinson Crusoe style.

Talk about beach front property.

Ceviche! Didn't dig it at first but it has really grown on me.

Community love (Me and Caitlin)!

A nice scenic moment.

We walked out to the fishing pier to survey the land.

This is my favorite picture of the day.

Fwiends Fowever (Jonathan, Me, Tara, and Caitlin)!

Chulu’s Public Hospital v. Piura’s Private Hospital

Shortly after I went to the hospital in Chulucanas, I went to the hospital in Piura to get a mole checked (small, and no big deal). Having the images and the experience of the public hospital so fresh in my mind, walking into the private hospital literally took my breath away. I couldn’t believe how different the two are. Everything from the equipment to the facilities are brand new and very well kept, the staff is extremely helpful and available (I assume because they are not understaffed like the public hospital), and the services are plentiful. I decided to take pictures of both hospitals to illustrate just how stark the differences are.

#1: Available Services

 

 #2: Consult Rooms

So these are the consult rooms at both hospitals. In Chulu, the consult rooms only span one hallway (the orange picture). The other hallway is the rest of the hospital. I took that picture to show you all just how small the hospital is. Two hallways. One for consultations and the other for observations/in-patients. So the consult hallway in the public hospital in Chulu has two rooms for kids, two for men, two for women, one for nutrition, and one for the “specialty doctor”. In the previous picture you read that specialty doctors, like a GYN, only come on certain day(s) of the week. This is the room they use. They ALL use it. Whether you are checking hoohas or hearts or moles or whatever. They all have to use that one room.

In the private hospital, as you can see in the picture, the consult rooms are located in a HUGE building that is only maybe a third of the whole hospital. From where the picture is taken, I am standing at the opposite end in front of a bathroom looking at the consult rooms nearest me, the nurse station in the middle, more consult rooms, and the bathroom at the other end. The second picture (the picture on the bottom right) is the emergency room area which also contains consult rooms in addition to shock trauma and observation rooms.

#3:  Emergency ROOM(s)


These are pictures of each hospital’s emergency room(s). In the public hospital, the emergency room is just a room on the main hallway. You can see the front doors at the end of the hallway. As I said in my first real blog entry about the hospital, the emergency room is just that, ONE room with ONE examination table. Unlucky if you happen to be the second emergency to arrive.

The private hospital has a whole building dedicated to emergency patients. They have a shock trauma room, where I witnessed 3 nurses attending to a patient while I was there. At no point did anyone have to leave to buy any medical supplies/medications. They rendered care as it was needed, and with the appropriate number of staff. The emergency building also has some consult rooms - like a cardiologist and an oncologist - to care specifically for emergency patients.

 #4: Emergency Observation Rooms and Bathrooms


Here we have the emergency observation rooms. Once you have been stabilized, you go here to be monitored. In Chulu, you will be sharing the room with 5 other people and all sharing one sink. You will also be reclining on questionable sheets. You will have access to one bathroom, that all the other patients in the hospital will be using as well. As you can see the bathroom in the public hospital consists of two bathrooms and one shower.

In the private hospital you only have to share a room with one other person, with whom you share one sink. There are bathrooms all over the hospital; there are two large bathrooms, one at each end, in the consult area (picture #2) and there is another large bathroom in the emergency building.

The real problem with the public hospital is not the lack of space but the abundance of mosquitoes. During the summer months especially, there are hoards of mosquitoes which are not only annoying, but a serious health risk to all the patients and staff because Dengue Fever is a huge problem here in Chulu. Many people go to the hospital when they get Dengue (also called Bone Breaking Disease), so just one sick person could start an epidemic. Only recently did the hospital have funds to purchase mosquito nets for all of the beds. It’s a start anyway.

#5: Cafeterias


I mentioned in my last blog update that the public hospital doesn’t have a cafeteria. Well, here it is. What their cafeteria used to be, anyway. Looks like even when it was functioning it wasn’t much to shake a stick at.
A stark contrast to the very well kept and well stocked cafeteria in the private hospital. Complete with places to sit and enjoy your food and everything!

That’s it!

Hope you enjoyed your tour :)

Routine Grocery Shopping.

So, imagine you are grocery shopping and you are waiting for the grocer to bag up your things. It is a busy day so you take 2 steps back to the wall behind you. You hear a weird cooing sound, but you ignore it because, hello, you are in a grocery store and anything that would coo would be dead and in a package by this point in the food chain. But then you realize the cooing is very close…and then that cooing is actually coming from a chicken that has been sitting next to you for the last 5 minutes. Casual.

“I would never go to this hospital as a patient; it’s absolutely dreadful!”- Padre Hugo

So we are all sick right now. Which has been a bummer, but has also been interesting in a “living with the people” kind of way. Tara had to go to the hospital yesterday (with Hermana Margarita’s urging) which turned out to be a real lesson in how people here really live. Or at least what they have to cope with from time to time. But let me start by saying what you are about to read is not very pretty and if you have a beating heart, will probably make you sad and angry like it made me. I went over after letting my class out early (due to bathroom issues), and spent the next two hours running around trying to get my tests figured out, buy what Tara needed from the pharmacy and track down nurses. 

When you are checked into the Chulucanas hospital you are given a bed in a room full of other people with maybe one partition between the five of you for some privacy. You get a sheet on the bed that is questionable, to be kind, and you have to wait for the one nurse to make rounds to all of the patients; there is no buzzer, there is no intercom, you just have to wait your turn. Did I mention this is the emergency observation room? Oh, well yes, it is. This is where they take you after seeing you primarily in the hospital’s emergency ROOM, which is ONE room with ONE examination table.

So once you have made it out of the emergency room and into the emergency observation room, you are treated. Well, you are treated if you have the money to go to the pharmacy, which is located at the entrance of the hospital a few rooms away, to buy what the nurse tells you she needs. And I don’t mean, like, pills for later, I mean you need to buy the needle for the IV, the tube that connects it to IV fluid, a needle to extract the air from the tube, and whatever IV liquids you need (ciprofloxacin, for bacteria, and suero, for rehydration, in our case). Oh, and you also have to have someone there to buy it for you. I imagine the nurse would if need be, but I am sure it would take a very long time seeing as she has to attend in the ER AND monitor 5 patients in the observation room. 

At the point in which you have a bed and your medicine, you wait, largely unattended, unless you are white and you have another white friend (me) running around the hospital (surely in places where Peruvians are NOT allowed to come and go freely) making the nurse come back when your cipro, or suero runs out.

Our hospital visit was not bad, or not as bad as we had anticipated based upon when we had heard about the hospital, but I am pretty sure that is because we are white, and had enough money to pay for whatever the doctors prescribed. Our bill (for both Tara’s ER visit and stay and my tests) was a mere 60 soles – so $20– which a lot of Peruvians can’t afford. 

But the money really isn’t the only factor working against Peruvians that have to come to the hospital. In addition to the difficulty of arriving to the hospital with money and someone to help purchase what is needed, you need someone to bring you food too. There is no food service at the hospital. That’s right, a lot of sick people and no food. You can get vouchers from the Red Cross, which is a moto ride away (as in, 1sol) but a lot of people (especially those not from Chulu) don’t know about this or don’t have someone with them to go get the vouchers. So if you come alone and manage to make it to the ER observation room, and find a way to get the medicine you need from the pharmacy so you can be treated, you could go without food your entire stay at the hospital. A lot of people from the campo (farm lands) come to the hospital in Chulu because it is closer than Piura (the big city with the nice hospital) and they often come alone because it’s a long journey and it’s expensive. 

And here is the kicker (oh yes, there is a kicker)…in the whole hospital, there is ONE bathroom for patients. Yup, one bathroom. Two stalls and one shower for men and two stalls and one shower for women. For a whole hospital. And let me tell you, it is gross. I am not squeamish when it comes to bathrooms (traveling to Asia really cures you of that), but that bathroom was terrible. Stuff on the seats, stuff on the floor, people washing their cloths in the sink because all they brought with them were the clothes on their backs…the last place you want to find a dirty bathroom, is in a hospital. It’s pretty unsettling. 

As you can see, the hospital is not somewhere you want to end up (not that anyone wakes up really WISHING they get to go to the hospital anywhere…), but that is the reality for people here. And what more, the poverty here breeds a lot of illness due to malnutrition (especially diabetes), so that adds to the number of people likely to end up in the Chulucanas hospital. 

I am not sorry I had to experience it. I am sorry it exists, but I am not sorry I had to poop in a cup in that dirty, gross bathroom. It affirms for me the reason I came here in the first place. That there is change that needs to happen and hopefully I can be a part of it. And if not, then at least maybe I can be more sensitized to another part of the world’s reality. Or even to just hold a crying man who struggles with realities of HIV as we go to the hospital together (I probably should have started blogging when that happened – Antonio comes and goes from the diocesan health office where I work). Guess I will just have to wait and see where God’s plan takes me.

PS: I promise my posts wont all be this long.

I am such a noob.

Hello Probably-Already-Blogging-In-Your-Sleep-Viewer(s),


I don’t have any idea what I am doing. Tara (my community member who is a goddess at all things Google/blogging) is teaching me how to live in the 21st century. But apart from that, some cool stuff has happened recently and I thought to myself “Self: some interesting stuff happens in your life sometimes, I bet some of your loved ones are bored at work and would like to read about it”. So, I decided to make a blog! So, most of you probably know something about what I am doing here and who I live with and blah blah blah. But for those of you who DON’T (what terrible friends you are) here is a very brief rundown before we really get into the good stuff:

I live in community with Tara, Caitlin and Antonette. Tara is the aforementioned Google goddess, with whom I share a deep love of Friends. She and I are ALWAYS sick. Caitlin is never sick, and is from Colorado and went to college in Washington, and is therefore a free-loving hippie. I KID. But seriously. She makes granola FROM SCRATCH. Antonette and I go way back; way back to NDP (high school for you really terrible friends). She is always out and about, but when she is home we enjoy concocting mushes in the kitchen usually comprised of all of the edible things in our fridge + condiments and/or chocolate. We have had both great successes and epic fails. Asi es la vida (eh eh, get it?!?!)

I have 4 jobs. I work at the diocesan health office (Centro Pastoral = CP) as a…doer of what needs to be doner, parish health office (San Jose Obrero = SJO) as a nurse, seminary (Santisima Trinidad = ST) as an English teacher, and at the women’s center (Cetpro Betania = Ceo) as a yoga instructor. They are all just dandy.

Enjoy!