Jugo, clinica, y more

So, the party ended and the real work began on Wednesday. We traveled about 2 hours north of Santa Cruz to rural lands to work in the clinic. Unfortunately, the clinic we normally would have worked at was impossible to reach, as the road has been washed away during the rainy season. They are working on repairs and hopefully this week we'll make it up there. We set up clinic at Arboleta, an outpost about 20 minutes from where we would have had clinic. The building was simple, cement bleakly painted a green color that nobody would ever choose. There are 3 rooms with psuedo desks and chairs and "examining" tables or beds. We saw patients there wednesday, thursday, and friday. It really wasn't bad and felt good to finally really get to work, which is the whole purpose for coming down here in the first place! We are able to treat people with some medications that we have on hand, simple stuff like BP meds (diuretics, beta-blockers, and aceis), amoxicillin and bactrim only for antibiotics! Some antiparestics and antifungals. Then some simple stuff like tylenol and ibuprofen.

So this week it was just the 3 students and myself. Each day we also had a Bolivian doctor there as well. I sent 2 patients to the hospital this week. One woman had just been discharged after staying about a week and being treated for a UTI. She was dehydrated yet again, and looked terrible. Another man actually was receiving dialysis twice a week, and came to clinic with a blood pressure in the 70's/50's with tachycardia and fevers. I've seen some heart disease, DM, lots of arthritis, and one rheumatoid arthritis. The kids mostly had "beechos" which is there term for worms, parasites, etc. All in all it was similar to other trips I've taken in the past, but I felt that these patients had more continuity and follow up. And I could actually order tests on them if necessary. The saddest moment was when I saw this older man, who had sustained a large burn injury on the back of his leg about 1.5 years ago. It was still open and quite large, but fairly clean. I was trying to explain how he should dress the wound every day when I found out he couldn't afford soap. That sucks! We bought him some soap.

We stayed out at a small town near the outpost, at a village called Buena Vista. It was very cute. Every town has a plaza which is the focal point of the town. The plaza is like a park, with lots of trees, bushes, flowers, and also lots of benches. In the evenings, everyone comes here to hang out, talk, etc. It's really nice. Buena Vista had a nice plaza, surrounded by a church built in 1690. They are famous for their jugo or juice. It was delicious, a combo of orange, passion fruit, strawberry and other stuff. It was great. Our hostel, on the other hand, was bare bone basic. It cost $2 a night, and was worth only $2 a night. Pretty much we were camping outside. The outside toilets broke after 1 day. The showers had those electric shower heads that I hate, with lots of wires sticking out. I'm always freaked out that I'll get electrocuted! All in all, wasn't that bad, and not too many bugs except for a gigantic cockroach the size of my foot!

On Friday night we made our way back to Santa Cruz. Carnavale is going on from Saturday to Wednesday morning. Basically, it sounds like a large city wide water balloon fight with drinking and dancing! We'll see! Also, a couple people left the house and a whole boatload of people arrived, from Wright State, UCSF, and Loyola. Where are all these people going to fit! More on carnavale and hopefully pictures in the next post!