What a Week!

Well, my week started off on a great track...I saw a birth at the Posta. I was working on Monday morning when one of the nursing interns told me a woman had just arrived and was in labor. So I went back to the birthing room and introduced myself. I was able to feel the baby's position and find the heart beat using the Doppler machine. We thought she was going to give birth relatively soon due to the time in between contractions and the position of the baby, but hours passed. The poor thing was in so much pain, but these Peruvian women sure are troopers. She breathed through it and walked around. There are no epidurals here!

So finally at 3pm, she started pushing. There is no crying or screaming involved with these women. They are told to close their mouths, put their chins to their chest and push, push, push! By screaming or crying out, you lose strength in your pushing, so that is why they close their mouths and buckle down. I was right there as the baby crowned and out he came into the world. Little Sebastian was born at 3:25pm! We waited about 20 minutes for the placenta to follow. The woman, Flora, was from a neighboring mountain community. She is 20 years old and this was her second baby. Unfortunately, her first child, who was born only a year ago, died after three weeks due to a respiratory infection. I hope that little Sebastian is able to thrive.

What a high to feel for the rest of the day. I loved every minute of it and am soooo excited to start my midwifery program now. Births here are just so different than ours in the States. There are no gowns or comfortable beds. The parents-to-be have to buy a piece of plastic, plastic bags, sanitary napkins, blankets and things to clean the baby, etc. They are not provided. The woman wears her clothes and they just put the piece of plastic under her rear and then drape it down into a trash can to catch all of the blood and birthing fluids. Luckily, she does get to spend the next couple of nights in the clinic, but not in her own room. The family has to bring her food. So very different from our amazing birthing suites or even the comfort of your own home!

Tuesday was a fun day as well. I can happily say that I have access to my money again as my debit card finally arrived. I have been 6 weeks without a debit card! I was actually on my way to Urubamba to exchange some US Dollars that Kaitlyn had given me to pay her portion of our tickets to the beach when I stopped in the Serpost shop on the off chance the envelope had arrived. And it had! The Serpost woman and I did a little happy dance. We have become friends over the past 2 weeks as I have been waiting for my envelope to arrive.

I went to teach my health class to the kiddies at the Telecentro after-school program that evening, but the director had totally forgotten I was teaching that night and the kids were not prepared. So I spent the hour helping with homework and playing games with the kids. We will try again next week!

That night we had Laya's birthday party/Kristi's going-away party at the bar. Everyone had a grand time chatting and hanging out. Porfi ran some good happy hour specials for us and Kaitlyn had bought lots of bar snacks. We were all psyched to have some pretzels!

After working out on Wednesday morning, Jess, Amos, Bricia and myself headed out to Rumira to the school there for our cleaning day. We were all more than a little shocked and dismayed to see the absolute mess the room we were supposed to clean out was. Words do not do it justice. You need to see the photos. The room is a large rectangle and it was full of stuff -- eucalyptus trunks, branches and leaves (the director makes herbal medicines), other trunks and leaves of herbs, desks, tables, broken chairs, paint cans, buckets, metal rebar, trash, trash cans, etc. Well, we jumped right in and started clearing it all out. As not one of us are fans of spiders or other creepy crawlies, we were a bit on edge carrying all of the stuff out. Gradually other health volunteers came to help as well. It was amazing that in less than 4 hours, we cleared out the room, distinguished what furniture was salvageable, cleaned that furniture, swept/mopped out the room, and put the good desks/tables/chairs back in. All in all, we saw 3 tarantulas (yes, lots of hopping around and "Oh my Gods" were said in high pitched voices), lots of little spiders, tons of roly poly bugs and 1 scorpion.

The school kids were adorable and helped us with the mopping and cleaning of the desks and furniture. Or next task is to go back with paint and decorations to get the room in order. We had to walk back to Ollanta from Rumira as no combi (communal vans) were available. The walk isn't a bad one, only about 25 minutes but unfortunately it had been raining all morning so the road was pure mud. I made it home absolutely exhausted and completely covered in mud! My shower was heaven!

In the afternoon, I met Santiago at the Posta to clean his leg wound and then did some data collection. I made plans to eat lunch with my favorite nurse intern, Andrea, since she is leaving tomorrow.

I had a great time in the Posta this morning. For some reason they were fully staffed even though Thursdays are slow days. We all just sat around in the reception area talking and laughing. One of the administrative workers who I had been friends with last year just came back from her month of vacation so it was really nice to catch up with her. It is mornings like today that make me feel good about what I am doing. To know that I have built a great relationship with the workers in the clinic is an accomplishment I am proud of. Then Andrea and I spent 2 hours doing data collection. What am I going to do without her helping me read the horrible handwriting in that darn book??? She says she will come back and help me on the weekends but I can't allow that. She has a young son in Cusco and she has to find a job.

Anyway, Andrea and I went out for lunch at a local restaurant and enjoyed each others company. I really am going to miss her. She is very good at her job. She really cares about the patients. The Ollanta Posta needs more nurses and staff like her. Our volunteers and the community wouldn't have such a negative view of the Posta if it was staffed with more people like her. I just had one of those "light bulb over the head" moments -- Andrea would be amazing as our Peruvian health coordinator. I wish we had the funds right now. She has to wait a year before she can sit for her nursing license and is just going to be looking for a job in Cusco to pay the bills. She loves it here. I wish we could work something out. Of course, I would never say anything to her about this until I knew we had money to pay. Something to keep in mind though!

Okay, time to get back to the Posta and back to the snail pace of data collection.