Rollin' With the Punches: April 2014

I've been meaning to write this post for a long stinkin time, since spring break ended to be exacted. For having a relatively easy semester, the last few weeks sure have push some of my buttons! This week alone, I've been averaging 14 hours school days. Between clincals, make up work, class and SI, I've barely had time to sleep (okay, i never give up my sleep, but i've been giving up everything else!)

But on to Honduras…

I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the beautiful country of Honduras for spring break with Global Brigades: Medical. Global Brigades is an organization that works to improve the quality of life for people in rural Honduras among other countries. There are 7 different brigades: medical, dental, public health, water, business, architecture, and one more I cannot remember. Each brigade works together to help make these people live sustainable, just too awesome. The brigade I went on was Medical and it was the neatest experience. The group arrived in the capital, Tegucigalpa, and immediately got in our buses and headed to the compound, Posada Azul. The compound was basically in the middle of nowhere and completely breathtakingly gorgeous. Mountains (like monster mountains you never want to have to climb, or drive up for that matter…) were in every direction. The only downside to this beautiful place was the stairs…all 150 of them. Definitely a workout. Tow other schools were staying at Posada Azul at the same time, UC Irvine and UCSD. I even met some tri delta sisters from USCD! We ate first thing because lunch was definitely missed in our travels.

All day, the first full day, was spent sorting medications. I almost forgot to mention, we brought over all the medications for our brigade in our luggage. I would have loved to see security look at my bag with 10 bottles of vitamins, 10 bottles of beta-iodine, 2,000 bandaids, and 20 rolls of gauze! So I got a little pharmacy experience and I'm not going to lie, it made me pretty glad I didn't pursue my short lived dreams of becoming a pharmacists. I started recognizing the Spanish versions of all the drugs I learned about in pharmacology last semester. The dots were connecting!

Day 2 we woke up before the sun and headed out to Santa Cruz, our brigade community. The drive was about two hours of bumpy, twisty, scary roads but the bus driver Mario made sure to get us there alive all week. The line of people was probably at least 100 people long when we arrived to the school to set up shop. It took a little to get rolling on that first day but once we did, whew! I spent the morning in the gyno rotation, and I think I'll pass on that rotation next time haha The afternoon was a little more intense. I was in triage. It was myself, another girl (who thankfully spoke a little spanish!) and our translator, Adrian. Thank goodness for those translators! Me and Ailon made a great team, she had the Spanish part down for the most part and I could identify what medical type things and drugs they were trying to say. Not too mention all week I majorly brushed up on my manual blood pressures. I thing triage was definitely my favorite part of the week, I even got to come back the next day and do it again! The second time, I had to get a little more confident in my Spanish because I didn't really have a choice! After we got back to camp, it took all I had to stay awake for dinner, I think I passed out by 9!

The second day was just as exhausting. I spent the morning in data informatics. The whole purpose of the data informatics system is too get all the people into some sort of medical record. It helps the powers that be keep track of everyone and also identify trends in medical problems. Day 3 was my busiest day by far. I spent the morning in the pharmacy. Basically how it worked was the pharmacist set up all these suitcases all around the room and a volunteer would bring us the prescription lists and we would be responsible for deciphering the incredibly impossible handwriting of the doctors (especially Dr. Belt…) and get everything necessary before giving it to the pharmacist to check and distribute. I don't think I sat down once! The afternoon was my favorite (I know, every things my favorite). I was in physician's consultation. I sat with one of the Honduran doctors (she even spoke English too!). She would talk with the patient and figure out what was going on, then turn around and explain everything to me. We even saw a lady with Cushing's which was neat. Halfway through the afternoon, we saw a 16 month old little boy who the doctor diagnosed with pneumonia. The little guy looked just miserable, he was coughing so much he couldn't breath. The mom said he couldn't sleep, he had a fever, and he was dripping sweat. It was obviously a sort of serious situation but we just had to do the best we could with what we had. The doctor decided the best thing to do would be to administered an extend breathing treatment to help little man's oxygen. Poor thing was fighting it so hard he fell asleep after 20 minutes of screaming and thrashing around. Before he fell asleep though, he wrapped his little hand around my finger and it made my heart melt. I didn't even think twice when the doctor asked me to stay with the mom and help hold the mask and keep little man calm. It was one of the moments I hadn't realized I needed, that made me realize without a doubt I'm doing what I should with my life. Throughout the 3 days, our brigade saw 880 patients…yep 880.

The last day our brigade had the opportunity to have a "holistic model day" in which we helped with another brigade's project. A two hour drive later, we arrived in El Canton to help with the construction of a community health center. After 3 hours of lugging 200 pound wood beams onto a roof, I thought I was dying. I thought I was going to have it easier after lunch by helping with the trench digging but let me tell ya, that was just as hard! That day was some of the most back breaking work I have ever helped with, props to all y'all construction peeps!