Clinic Madness!!

So we definitely learned a good lesson at the clinic today. Friday is ridiculous. All of the women from the surrounding mountain communities come down with their children and the clinic is packed. We arrived at 9am when the clinic opens and the crowd was already out of the door into the street. We helped by pulling records and then giving them to the triage techs. We also helped in the triage area by weighing and measuring patients. Keri showed me how to take blood pressure so I now can help with that too. The first 3 and a half hours of the day flew by. There was a Columbian woman who lives in Orange County there passing out food and clothes to the people. Lidia started a non profit about a year and a half ago for the people in Ollanta and surrounding communities. So that just added to the chaos. You had to weave through the food line and the children crawling all over the floor. Not to mention the stray dogs that came in because they smelled food. Like I said, ridiculous. However, all of the morning patients were seen (about 67 in all) by 1pm. The clinic closes for lunch and then re-opens at 3pm. At 3pm, we probably only had about 20 more patients. Keri and I pulled more charts and did more in triage before sitting with Helio, the Intern for a patient.

These two young boys, one was 6 and the other was 3, had horrible skin lesions. They looked like a really, really bad case of ringworm. The poor three year old had them all over his legs and genital area. The mom said that they appeared yesterday, but there is absolutely no way possible for this to be true. We just think that if people bathed their children more regulary, so many of the skin problems we have seen would not exist. The kids today were just so dirty, but they were happy so at least those little dirty faces had big smiles on them.

I think that now that we have kind of asserted ourselves downstairs with the women workers, we should be able to do some more hands on things. They see that we are capable of working so they actually give us things to do. Yesterday, we sat downstairs and made gauze pads and cotton balls for two hours. It must be much cheaper for them to buy the gauze and cotton in bulk. So you cut out the squares of gauze and then fold them into nice little 4x4s. As for the cotton, there is an art to making a good cotton ball. It took me a little while to get the hang of it, but after 2 hours, I was a pro! We just like the fact that we were actually doing something for the clinic.

Also, Dr. Arnaldo asked us to help him translate some medical procedure videos from English to Spanish so that he can then take them to Cusco and teach people how to treat skin lesions, burns, etc. We are looking forward to this work as well. We will start translating on Wednesday when Dr. Arnaldo returns.

So, the clinic is picking up. We are still trying to organize a week out in Patacancha and a day or two a week in the Chilca clinic.

I have injuries from washing clothes yesterday and today. Washing your clothes is serious business, and I now have two abrasions on my middle fingers from the effort. Never again will I take my washing machine and dryer for granted!! Just like the cotton balls, we have learned the art of clothes washing. First you soak the clothes, then you scrub the crap out of them -- you even use a wooden board and brush on your jeans and other pants-- then you do two cycles of rinsing before finally wringing them out and hanging them on the line. There is nothing more embarrasing than your 35 year old host father helping you wash your socks and showing you the best way to get them clean (thank God we did our underwear earlier by ourselves!). Also, God forbid you try to wash anything with your socks or anything with your underwear. The socks are dirty with bacteria from the ground that should not mix with your other clothes and NO ONE should EVER wash their underwear together. Completely unhygienic!! Keep that in mind!

We are looking forward to a nice quiet evening tonight before heading out to Cusco tomorrow morning with the rest of the group. I think we´ve got: myself and Keri, Hallie, Michelle, and Will and Jessica coming for the night. Then Josh and Zach may join us on Sunday for the futbol game. It will be good fun.

For those of you who are asking for my address here, it is quite simple:
Alison Peaper, Awamaki
Ollantaytambo, Cusco, Peru

Just let me know if you send something because I will have to continually go to the post office here to check for it. No one has house numbers or anything. Thank you!

Hope all is well with everyone. Sorry to hear about all the snow in Indy!