Clinic Highlights

I managed a 2-day medical clinic in Purulha on Monday and Tuesday. We brought in a Guatemalan doctor from the capital at the last minute so that a visiting student doing a missions practicum could experience a medical clinic. We served about 80 people in all over the two days. Usually we serve many more, but since the doctor spoke Spanish, the patients talked to her a lot more. My sister who is visiting for a few days helped work the pharmacy too. Here are some of the things that stick out in my mind.

It's so easy to make the women here laugh... and the babies cry.

Jonathan, the visiting intern from a Bible college in Ireland, got to do his first rectal exam. He didn't want to keep the glove!

The people were the most understanding at this clinic than at any other when we turned them away for lack of time.

There was one girl, 14, who had been born premature and then was subsequently malnourished so she looked pretty rough and appeared to have some mild brain damage. The doctor gave the mother a sharp, very sharp reprimand for not following doctors orders for treatment when she was a baby.

Then the standard deworming experience where the child doesn't want to take the one time dose of Combantrin and spits it all over his mother.

I think I have just three more clinics before I leave Guatemala in July and as exhausting as they are, it is some of the most rewarding work I get to do down here.