Pancho Mateo

This morning we woke up at 3:30 to a major electric storm. From our perch a top the side of the mountain we could the cloud to surface lightening. The thunder was extremely loud and sounded like it was moving around in a circular motion. It was still raining when we came down the mountain and moved our stuff into Pancho Mateo.

We set up in the church and began seeing patients. I spent the entire day in triage except for a moment when I took a girl to do a urinary analysis. It stayed pretty cool throughout the morning, but as the rain stopped in the early afternoon, the heat picked up. The church worked well (from a traffic flow standpoint), but there was no cross breeze because the surrounding buildings were within two feet of the church.

Many of the patients were Creole-speaking, but our translators were too busy working with the doctors so some of the guys from the church helped translate Creole-Spanish. It was pretty tough working with the patients because they don’t answer the questions I ask. I’ll say to a mother, “does your child have any allergies to any medicines?” She’ll tell me, “No. She’s here for an infection. No allergies.” I’ll finish taking a history, which is hard enough to get through with the best patient and she’ll turn to me and say, “Oh, yea. She can’t have penicillin.”

One woman today was almost deaf. It was difficult to take her medical history with three Creole-Spanish translators yelling at her. I let her through after Laura took her blood pressure. Many people come in with “gripe,” the flu or cold symptoms. Most people are just sniffling, but still want medicine. One girl actually did have a fever of 101, but most are really fine.

The last few patients of the day were children whom we let in the door even though we were closing. One had a fungus on his feet, which I diagnosed before sending him to the doctor who confirmed my diagnosis and asked me how I would treat it. I said to use the anti-fungal cream, which was, apparently, the correct treatment.

We finished the day earlier than expected and were on the road by 5 p.m. After dropping Laura, Meg, Nicole, Dr. Hermann (our Haitian/Dominican doctor today) and the translators off, we headed back up to Tubagua for a dinner of pork chops (I did not eat), fried rice, fried bananas, a root veggie stewed in tomato sauce, avocado and salad.