July 3rd, 2010
Hoya Grande Brigade day 1 (July 2nd). Population ~ 1,300. Poverty level is around $20 a month for the average Honduran family. The village is located up on a mountain which requires us to drive for roughly 1.5 hours. Water storage is a problem and they only receive water every 8 days. Our brigade was set up at their school building. Each classroom was used for one station.
The 800 person line
Today was the end of the Global Brigade in Hoya Grande. Over the last 2 days, we saw almost 1,100 patients (~850 on day 1 and 200 on day 2)! Keep in mind that the population of the village is 1,300-so we basically almost saw everyone and their mothers, literally. On day 1, I worked in the pharmacy (pharmacia) with Dayanthi and Chester. Oh my goodness, I never worked so hard in a pharmacy before. We were NON-STOP from about 9:30AM until 6PM? I can’t even remember! We worked so much that we completely forgot to eat lunch. It wasn’t until Chester asked Tom if people were already eating lunch. I think the pharmacy was pretty stressful. It’s probably because we got really tied up with amount of prescriptions on that day. In one day we saw almost 800 people! Thank goodness Alec and Dana came into help us, we would have been swamped without them. I learned a lot about the medications and dosages. I know now that anti gripe means anti-cold, anti tos-anti cough, anti hoga- antifungal. I can even recall the types of meds needed for that particularly diagnosis (this is what happens when you see the same things over 100 times)!
Fred and Mike taking a quick break
Playing doctor on each other
Hoya Grande part 2
I worked with Dave (from Chicago Loyola Med School) today. He’s so chill and I had a blast working alongside of him. I appreciated his thoughtfulness as well as his realistic approach to medicine. We are student doctors, not doctors so we can’t just rush through patients and think that we know everything. With this superiority complex, we’ll be endangering the lives of the patients and it doesn’t benefit anyone. That is the one thing I liked about him- his humility and understanding that he doesn’t know it all, thus, he won’t act like he does. It is the lives of the patients that are at stake, not our egos. I found his mentality to be very refreshing and I hope to carry it throughout my medical career.
Dave, Greg, and Ecstasy workin' it
Today was also Mike’s Birthday! He turned 25 and the staff got him a cake and we students got him a Global Brigade shirt all signed up with messages. It was like a shirt-greeting card. I think he really liked it!
Mike smiling for the camera before the cake fight
