A Turn-Around Weekend

So the end of last week was good. I really enjoyed heading up the clinic but at the same time, I'm just as glad to let Laura take her responsibility back. Plus this means I might get to go on some outreach trips this week! :) Outreach trips are my favourite! But whatever God has instore will be great, I'm sure. Like I was a tiny bit disappointed about not getting to go on the outreach last week, but in the end, I had a better day at the clinic than I would have at outreach.. so the Lord knows best.

This weekend is a big turn-around point because most of the volunteers here come for a month (a few come for less and a few for more) and this is the end of the month - therefore, we have a ton of people leaving, and a whole crew of new volunteers coming in. So Friday and Saturday nights were both goodbye suppers and hanging out with the old crew who I have become quite attached to, and then on Saturday we met some of the newbies too. I'm sad to see some of my friends go home, but I realize that is how this works.. and for one of them, going home is probably best. Poor Annie! We have been joking that she is allergic to Roatan because she has had every conceivable illness while here, even things that are unrelated to being in a foreign country! lol. so she is a bit sad about leaving, but mainly she is pumped to be gettting outta here! lol.

Last night we had an excellent dinner at Rotisserie Chicken to send off the staff/welcome the newbies in style.. true island style! Then of course, the clinic beckons.. we had a big shipment of meds from Direct Relief (an international aid company who sends us meds twice a year or something) so we had to go and sort through the shipment and stock all the meds either in the pharmacy or the storeroom.. so our pharmacy students who are leaving early this morning got one last chance to help us and the newbies got a running start! lol. But that is clinic life for ya!

Now I'm off to try out a new church this morning and then to West Bay to swim/snorkle.. around here, Sunday=beach day! And man, I am up for that! I'll need a good day of relaxing to prepare for the hectic Monday we will have training all the newbies, seeing tons of patients (Mondays are always crazy busy) and sorting through the meds further and doing med inventory! So I'm gonna soak up the rays while I can!

Annie & Mado (pharmacy students) who leave today and  Me & Laura in the Clinic pharmacy

Interesting week at the clinic

This has certainly started out as an interesting week at the clinic! Laura is gone to Le Ceiba (on the mainland) with half the med students to help out with a big surgery clinic that a mission group from the states is hosting. So I'm the new head nurse (lol, thats what happens when you only have 2 nurses, and one leaves.. but I'm still taking it as a compliment!). And thankfully we have a volunteer RN in for the week, so I'm not solo anymore, but I'm still orientating her and stuff, so its still a lot of responsibility. But I'm loving it! :) Lots of critical thinking and problem solving necessary!

And we have seen some cool stuff over the last few days... an infected gunshot wound, really nasty cases of chicken pox, and interestingly enough, some of my fav patients have been gringos (Americans/white people). Gringos seem to get themselves into the most interesting predicaments.. we had a nice elderly gentleman who accidentally overdosed himself on his blood pressure meds (easily enough to do) and we ended up monitoring him on the EKG all morning but he was fine.. then another had a stroke, and my favorite of today was a woman who came in for a HIV test (which normally requires a finger stick which we draw about 1.5mls of blood from) but she had a blood disorder and it clotted too quickly.. so I got to draw her blood (venipuncture, which is not that common at the clinic because we dont have any volunteer lab techs right now, so we send any pts who really need blood drawn away to have it done at the hospital). Anyway, I drew her blood then I got to go use the lab equipment to spin it etc and do the HIV test! It was a blast!! 

So overall, I'm still loving the clinic and I'm totally into the swing of things here. I'm enjoying the challenge of practicing in a new culture and I finally feel like my spanish is improving (The nurse I was working with today was super impressed, but if you dont speak it, even a little seems impressive! lol, but they are getting me to translate some now, so I must be improving..or they are getting more desperate!). And I enjoy working with all the different volunteers who come from many different parts of the world and from many different professions. So much fun collaboration occurs and you learn so many different things! Plus I love being able to share about PEI and Canada with everyone.. and I feel like I'm even representing the profession of nursing well because often volunteers are surprised to find I'm a nurse and a student at that! 

Finally a sunny day! And its a weekend to boot!

So this weekend has been the first bit of sun we have seen in over a week! So you can tell just how excited everyone was when it finally warmed up (lol, that is such a relative term.. I as a Canadian, never really felt it was cold but everyone else sure did complain!) and the sun came out.
I spent Friday and Saturday working on my major project for school which is organizing and hosting a hearing screen for people with hearing loss so that they can have hearing aids made/fitted by an American group who wants to donate them. It was a great project, and I put tons of work into it, however only 5 people showed up. That is both sad and discouraging because I know more people on the island really could have used the hearing aids, but what can you do.. I can't force them to come! And I did advertise with posters, TV and radio ads.

Thats me in the pink with one of the med students, molding her ears

 Then the rest of the weekend I spent catching up on sleep and homework that had been neglected while I worked on my project. Sunday afternoon I took a break from school stuff to go to the beach with my family. Sunday is beach day and I figured I deserved a study break! lol! We went snorkling but I got stung by a jellyfish-type thing and that quickly ended the fun of snorkling for the day. But then I walked on the beach for awhile and we stayed to watch the beautiful sunset and the firedancers. The firedancers put on a sweet little show on the beach each Sunday night and it was really spectacular. And I even managed to get a few decent pics of it.. not that any of my pics do this island justice but its the best I can do to share it with you.

    

                                              

Real taste of rainy season.. torrential downpour, random power loss and no internet since Sunday!

Ok, so we have had an internet blackout since Sunday night. I lost internet during a skype conversation that night, while in the midst of trying to post this blog.. and internet did not return til late this afternoon. So I'm sorry to anyone I worried, but I'm totally fine! It was a big fluke and a lot of factors contributed to not having internet.. we had a HUGE storm which knocked out power on and off for the last few days, plus there was a plane crash on the mainland, which meant our internet issues were not exactly a priority! lol plus things in Honduras always work on 'Honduran time', which means whenever they feel like getting to it.. lol.

Sunday Feb 13th: 

So this blog post will be shorter I promise! Sometimes I get a bit carried away and last post was definitely one of those times.. I just was so excited to share that with all of you!

So yesterday was my first introduction to the Roatan rainy season.. technically its been rainy season this whole time I've been here, but it hadn't really rained since I've been here. Some mornings while I walked to the clinic I would see damp ground or the odd puddle, but nothing substantial. 

pouring rain on the front step (look closely)

my sopping wet laundry

So yesterday morning I was up and running early to get some schoolwork done and decided to do my laundry bright and early so it could dry on the line all afternoon.. but no sooner than I had it on the line, it started to pour. I figured oh well, it will only rain a few mins and then it will stop, but no, no it rained and rained and rained. Torrential downpour! And we lost our power, which is a common occurrence on Roatan (like every few days) so I couldn't get the schoolwork I had planned to do done. So I just lay on my bed, listening to the rain hit the roof and was lulled to such a peaceful rest. Eventually I got up and did other things, like take some pics of the rain which I will post here:

look close you can see the downpour.. and this was only the beginning..

side angle out onto my deck

my room from the door

I also thought I should post some pics of my house, so here are some pics of my room here at Bob & Debi's. Its a beautiful house and I have my own room, bathroom and deck! :) 

   

Then today, was a similar day to yesterday. Although the weather did eventually clear up yesterday and the sun came out for a brief period, but the rain was back in full force to lull me to sleep at night. Then today I woke up to the rain and now, as I get ready for bed its still pouring!! I don't mind the rain though, it does cool things off a bit and it helps me focus on the mound of schoolwork that I really should be getting done! Plus this rainy season has been fairly dry compared to other years and it ends on the last day of Feb, so we dont have much time left before its over. Plus, rain is nothing to complain about when there is a good dumping of snow on the ground at home! :)

Wed, Feb 16th:

So rainy season sure is rainy! We had a crazy storm these last few days!! A Noreaster they say.. but not quite like the snowy cold Noreasters we get at home! lol. Although it has been cold by Roatan standards, and most people have resorted to long pants and sweaters.. lol, not me though! I'm still loving the heat, its probably still in the low 20s..

So we have been without internet since Sunday evening, and man that can be a long time! Our power has been on and off and with all the rain its been a bit crazy! I ran out of schoolwork that I could do without the internet and I have read several books since I've arrived, so I'm was trying to ration the books so I wouldnt read them all too quick, but when there is no computer, no power and pouring rain, there isn't much else to do. And clinic has been pretty slow too with the rain.. one day we only had 15 patients, which is nuts! And some of our staff got stuck on the mainland after going to sightsee this weekend because the ferry couldn't cross to Roatan in the storm. (But everyone is home safe and sound now) We arrived at the clinic the other day to find several inches of water on the floor too, which caused a bit of a rush to move any supplies that might be on the bottom shelf of our storage cupboards and thankfully not much got ruined! The issue is just SO MUCH WATER!! It was coming up through the floor, in between the grout of the tiles! You basically can't understand how much water there is, its been raining like torrential downpour for days.. rivers have overflowed, streets are flooding, bridges are under water, and its really dangerous for many people to leave their homes because everything is on a slope here and there is a real risk of mudslides.

This is someone's front lawn under at least a foot of water

Anyway, today the rain finally stopped this morning, and though there has been scattered showers all day, its 95% better than the last few days. And people started coming to the clinic in droves! I did triage by myself today (I've been practicing solo for a while but usually on a busy day they send me a volunteer to help even with things like weighing patients etc). And man, today was like the day of screaming babies! Not one kid seemed to be in a good mood, they were all shreiking even when all I wanted was to weigh them! lol the other volunteers were joking that my triage room was a house of terror and it sounded like I was murdering people! I wasnt. I wanted to kill a few people but I didnt. lol. 

Oh another fun medical story for those who care: we had a 1 month old baby come into the clinic today and I triaged her.. she was only 8lbs and really small. But her most distinguishing feature was her cyanosis. Like this baby was BLUE with a capital B! We put the O2 sat on her and I thought the machine must have been broken, I couldnt get a reading higher than 84% but it was hovering much lower most of the time. Even putting her on oxygen didn't help much.. thankfully we have a pediatric resident with us, and an emergency pediatric doctor, so after a full work up, they diagnosed her with a heart defect which meant her body wasn't getting much oxygenated blood. They wanted her sent to the capital of Honduras, on the mainland to get treatment.. but the family was from the Colonia and flat out said they could never afford it. They couldn't even afford a cab to the local hospital on Roatan. They were content to take her back home to whatever fate that might be.. but this story has a happy ending! Jacob our pediatric resident is here with a group called Global Healing Health Missions and he got on the phone and after a bit he was able to get them to agree to sponser her. They were going to send a helicopter tonight to come get her and her mom so she could be flown to the capital to undergo treatment (all paid for by Global Healing Health Mission)!! It was such a happy ending! Definitely the highlight of my day.. well aside from getting the internet back! lol! 

Anyways, thats enough for this blog.. I have tons of other internet stuff to catch up on, but thanks to everyone for reading my blog and for those who were worried by my absence online!

Outreach to Crawfish Rock

Note: this is an extremely long post! Sorry for the length but I wanted to tell the story properly and its hard to shorten it much because even this hardly does it any justice! :) Enjoy the read and feel free to stop reading at any point if it gets boring or redundant.. blogging is as much for me to share my experiences as it is for you to enjoy them!

So Wednesday was a big day for us at the clinic! Well a big day for me at least.. and man, it was long (13hrs), exhausting and sweaty.. but absolutely AWESOME! We did an outreach clinic to Crawfish Rock which is a fairly remote community so many people can't get to the clinic when they need urgent care, little alone on a monthly basis for follow-up for chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension. Dr Patrick left me in charge of gathering all our supplies and packing all the gear we needed for the trip. I was super pumped for the responsibility, plus it just fits my desire to organize and make sure things are packed really logically. He gave me a basic list of what to pack, but I added some extra stuff I figured we might need too.. and man, am I ever glad that girl guides taught me to be prepared! We ended up needing almost everything I packed extra of, and there were definitely things I didn't pack enough of (we went through a pile of supplies and medications!! Way more than anyone expected!)

So let me start this story at the beginning.. our drive. So we packed all our gear in big tupperware bins that we secured on the back of this rusty old king cab 4x4 truck. The truck has certainly seen better days, and would never pass inspection by North American standards, but it was pretty decent by Honduran standards! Only a hole rusted in the floor so the front seat passenger could see the road and brakes that hardly worked on a good day. So we rounded up our crew (basically half the clinic staff and pretty much everyone who didn't get a chance to go the brothel on Tues) Laura & I for RNs, Annie our pharmacy student, Deidre the med student, Steve our med resident and Dr Patrick (you'll remember him from my previous brothel post). Dr Patrick is our fearless leader for all outreach clinics and he has travelled to Crawfish Rock the last few times and knows the people. So we set out with all 4 of us girls squished into the back seat, and Steve riding shotgun with Dr Patrick. We drove a short way outside Sandy Bay and then turned onto Mudhole Rd. We had heard that Crawfish Rock was an isolated community and that the drive could be very treacherous, hence the strapping our gear onto the back of the truck.. but we had NO CLUE what we were getting ourselves into! The beginning of Mudhole Rd is a typical dirt road, but for some of the girls, Annie specifically who grew up in New Jersey, this was a totally new experience. But the road very quickly turned into a crazy rutted nightmare! It was nuts! The road basically goes up or down on a nearly 90 degree incline.. and the ruts in the road are sometimes several feet deep. We drove through basically the jungle part of the island! The views were spectacular (and I don't even have good pics.. hopefully I'll get some copies of the ones Annie and Steve took with their snazzy cameras and add them here too) and seeing some of the most beautiful parts of the island almost made the drive enjoyable. But man, we bounced and jostled our way to Crawfish Rock. 

view out the window as we drove up to Crawfish Rock

 

this gives some sense of the height but none of these pics does the real thing any justice

  

Poor Annie was soo sick when we got there! So when we arrived we stopped just inside the community at Miss Rosa's house. She is the towns matriarch and she 'gave' us permission to hold the clinic in the town. She said she had been praying we'd come to help her people and began shouting out praises to God when we showed up. She has some absolutely awful ulcers on her feet (diabetic foot ulcers) and really needs an amputation, but she refuses. Once before she had terrible ulcers and she moved into Sandy Bay to be nearer to the clinic and a nurse visited her daily to clean and dress her wounds until they healed, but unfortunately they are back. We tried to convince her to come in to Sandy Bay again so we could treat her feet but she wouldn't hear to it. We cleaned her feet up the best we could and left her granddaughter with supplies to continue dressing it for at least a month (prior to our visit she was using traditional remedies (aka: bush medicine) on it, but this wasn't doing the trick.. although I'm sure it made her feel better). Another interesting note here for the nurses who read this.. her BP was well over 200.. but she ran out of meds so wasn't taking any. Plus she said she only takes her 'pressure pills' when she feels bad, and right now she feels fine, therefore she said I was lying about her pressure being high! :) And its not that uncommon to see BP's over 200 and people be completely functioning! lol. Their bodies just adjust here.. I'm sure its not good for them, but they have no choice so they just keep on going. 

Welcome to Crawfish Rock!

this is just past where we set up the clinic but many locals don't attempt the road but take the sea instead

 

Once Miss Rosa gave us permission to set up, we continued down the road a bit further to the local school and set up there. Laura & I did registration/triage and I don't know if I have ever taken so many blood pressures or blood glucose tests ever before! Then we would send them on to see Drs for a quick and basic consult (since we didn't have much portable equipment it was pretty much based on whatever the patients could self report). Then the Drs would write prescriptions that Annie would fill at her pharmacy table. So what I just described was how it 'should' work.. but instead we just had tons of people going every which way.. we tried our best to do it that way but there were kids running all over the place and people just kept coming out of the woodwork! The line to get in was NEVER ENDING! We just worked and worked and worked! Once we finished registration, Laura & I moved over to help Annie dispense medications. Poor Annie who was already not feeling well after the drive was in the midst of a swarm of people all insisting they were here first. Everyone was terrified we'd run out of medication and they wouldn't get theirs. And honestly, we did run out of some things.. but we were able to find something similar or that would still work to treat whatever their diagnosis was. We became very creative and ingenuitive! Plus we learned sneaky ways to get kids to drive 10mls of nasty smelling/tasting de-worming and parasite medication! By the end of the clinic we were all starved, hot, sticky and ready for a nap. But we still had to pack up and drive back to the clinic. We stopped in French Harbour (local city) on the way back to grab food at a local burger place so that we could keep from starving! lol. 

this was early on too, so the chaos was only just beginning!

you can see the little table where we were doing registration, with the BP cuffs hanging off it.. that was my post!

   

Laura and I dropped everyone off and drove back to the clinic to drop off all the stuff. We just had everything put back in the clinic when we realized that we had scheduled another health fair (like a mini outreach clinic) at SOL foundation, a local drop-in youth centre for 5pm.. and it was already 4:30. So Laura and I restocked and repacked the gear for the next health fair. We called the organizer and she said it would be like 30-35 people, so we estimated an hour at most. We recruited help and ironically the only ones who agreed to come were the people who spent all day in Crawfish Rock (plus the other pharmacy student Mado and a new RN volunteer, Hannah).

this is the pharmacy girls doing health education at the SOL foundation

this is only the first 15 mins, and look at the crowd already! It only gets bigger from here!

 So we got to the SOL foundation's site (basically a soccer field) and set up. Kids and their parents started showing up so we began doing heights and weight for all the kids and blood pressure & blood glucose for all the adults. We wrote all their information down on cards, so that the next time they can bring the to the health fair to track their progress. The Drs set up and did quick consults and referred people to the clinic while the pharmacy girls did health education, mainly around dental hygiene & gave out tooth brushes. And again, the people kept coming and coming and coming! We saw well over 100 kids and many of their parents! It was crazy!! We didn't start packing up until 8:15pm!! By the time Laura dropped me off at home it was nearly 9pm... so I had put in over a 13 hr day! 

Like I said earlier, I was hot/sweaty, hungry and absolutely exhausted, but with a huge smile on my face! I was bursting to tell everyone how great my day was and I just have this sense of accomplishment when I think of how many people we helped or were impacted by our day!

It was pretty hard to get out of bed before 6am this morning though, I must admit! But today at the clinic it was even more rewarding when I did triage on several parents from the SOL foundation health fair. They had come to the clinic for follow up for things we had told them at the health fair (like for a consult about high blood pressure etc). It just made my day that our one day, has such a long lasting ripple effect! :)

Sorry for the length of my post, but I've been just dying to share my day with the world.. hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my experience doing outreach in Roatan! 

Another week in Roatan.. with glimpses of God along the way.

Not much exciting to mention but I figured I should post to make sure everyone knows I'm still alive. Plus if I get out of the habit of posting, I'll just never remember to post again.
This week has been great and I've really fit into the routine of the clinic and believe it or not, am sorta helping to orient the new staff. I've only been there a week, but since I understand the routine and stuff, I help some of the new volunteers get used to everything. I'm growing in independence at the clinic and am excited for what is yet to come! A group went back to the brothel today, but I stayed back to hold down the fort at the clinic, plus I wanted other people to have the opportunity to go. Tomorrow we are doing an outreach clinic in one of the further communities on the island of Roatan. That should be exciting! And then after work in the evening we are also doing a health fair at a local after-school program to provide mainly health education and HIV testing to the youth of Sandy Bay. So lots of exciting things yet to come this week!

As a side note, I'm loving being here because I can feel God's presence so well. Its nice to have a chance to rest in Him and refocus my life. At home, each day is so busy and there is never enough hours to get everything done, and I think a lot of what God tries to tell us gets lost in the rush. However here I have time to just enjoy what God is doing and it seems so much more evident. A lot of the Hondurans who live in poverty rely on God for everything and it just provides such unique examples of His power and glory! Like take Carlos (our gardener) for example, he is 18 and is the only person in his family who is working, so he supports the whole family (and still goes to school in the evenings! thats dedication to education I must add!) However, without his dad working too, there just isn't enough money to feed the family and pay rent. The money Carlos makes is just enough to cover the cost of food for the family and they haven't been able to pay their $75 rent for the past 3 months. Debi and I were talking about their situation this Saturday evening over supper and talking about how the landlord was going to evict them by Monday, but that Carlos firmly believed God would provide. We felt like we should stop and pray for the family, so we did. And I'm not even kidding, seriously 5 mins later, Carlos came to the house. He had forgotten something at the house earlier that day and needed it before work on Monday so he came back for it. Debi and I were so flabbergasted to see him after we had just prayed for them.. and Debi asked about the housing situation. Carlos told us that the landlady had just told them that she would give them one more month to get things together and pay! How CRAZY is that?! God provided housing for them! When the situation looked really bleak, He provided just as He promises! And I was even just so blown away with how confidently Carlos trusted Him! Anyway, thats my encouraging story for the day! Hope it makes your day like it certainly made mine! Remember we can trust Him always, no matter the situation because God wants to provide for us, just like He did for Carlos and his family!

The Perfect Saturday

At the clinic, we work hard all week.. but man, do we ever know how to relax just as hard on the days off. This morning, we started the day off with snorkeling at 7am.. yes I said AM!! Which seems crazy, especially on a Saturday, but its when the ocean is the nicest, and it isn't too hot. We went snorkeling down next to Anthony's Key (which is a local resort and dolphin training centre/santuary). Our friends, Suzie & Darren, are staying at a beach house right next to Anthony's key, so their private dock is like 10 -20 meters from the edge of the dolphin pens. So we went snorkeling right up next to the dolphin pens and from there we could see the dolphins SO well! It was fantastic! The dolphins are kept in the pens by a net but the holes in the netting are easily the size of a small plate (prob 5 inches in diameter) so the dolphins can easily stick their snouts (do dolphins have 'snouts' or  what would you call their nose/beak thing..anyways) out through the holes and everyone was petting them etc. It was like our own private dolphin encounter.. only we didn't pay a thing for it! (and the owners of Anthony's Key, know that we do it and they are fine with it.. as long as we don't bother the dolphins while they are training.. which is another reason why we go so early in the morning). So we played with the dolphins and then just snorkeled around.. we saw some pretty sweet fish, a lobster (which wasn't a huge draw for me, but the girls from New Jersey loved it! lol) and a pretty big sting ray! I'm not over my fear of fish yet.. but I'm making some serious progress! :)
Then after the sweet swim, at like 10 am I did some schoolwork on my laptop and the internet since both are finally working again! Praise God! Then this afternoon a bunch of the volunteers went out to Brick Bay, a local community prob 1 hr away on the south side of the island. Peggy, the woman who owns/founded/runs the clinic is a bit of a local celebrity here and everyone really appreciates what she does for the local people. So everyone knows Peggy and we get a lot of sweet connections through her. She knows this American couple who are building condos in Brick Bay.. the condos aren't completely finished yet and not furnished, thus not sold.. but the pool, beach and patio area are done and lonely without guests to enjoy them. So these nice people offered to let us volunteers come and spend the afternoon there. So we went over and enjoyed the pool, the view and I personally enjoyed a lounge chair & good book in the sun! It was beautiful and I think I'm finally getting some color! I look so pastey white next to the Hispanic Hondurans and the Roatan Islanders (who are black).
Then this evening, I was wiped so I just enjoyed a nice supper with my family here and have been chilling for the rest of the evening. I did a bit more schoolwork (researching for a paper! What fun! lol please sense the sarcasm). It is really really hard to do schoolwork when you are on a beautiful tropical island with tons and tons of things to do that are more fun and exciting than school! lol, so I'm trying to stay on top of things!
I also got a chance to skype my family and a few friends, which was wicked!! Its nice to be able to share just how exciting my time at the clinic has been and really express how much fun I'm having! Man, skype is a wonderful thing!!

First week in Roatan.. better than I could have ever hoped for !!

Ok, so I haven't had internet since I got here.. so this is several posts crammed into one. although I didn't have internet, I wrote a few posts at the end of each day so that I would remember things so I could post them when I finally got internet. Each day this week I was hopeful that the internet situation would be sorted out 'tomorrow' however, each day led to the next.. until finally today I got it fixed/sorted out and now I'm up and running!

sorry to keep everyone waiting to hear how things are going! I'll try to stay more on top of things from now on..
so here are my older posts:

Sunday, Jan 30/11:  Settling In

So I arrived on Saturday late afternoon and was met by a clinic volunteer, Dee (retired American man who lives here full time and helps out) , at the airport. All of my luggage made it to Roatan, safe and sound!! Such a huge blessing, and many on my flight were not so lucky!! There was a little note in each bag saying that they were opened and inspected by US customs, but none of the intense packing was disturbed.. lol, my guess is that customs opened them, looked at them and said to themselves “woah! looks like its legit, lets not bother, and say we did” lol. All in all, my flights down were great; very tiring but I met some awesome people and all along I was just very blessed! Then after I left the airport, Dee took me to Bob and Debi Cowan’s house. They are the family that I’m staying with while I’m here. Their place is FANTASTIC and they are even better!! They are absolutely lovely people and they have been more than welcoming! I have my own room, and its lovely! I even have my own deck!! The view from their place is spectacular! And its only like a 5-10 min walk from the clinic!

sitting at the table on our deck

the view from the railing of our deck

So when I arrived at their place, I was met by hugs from them and from Laura. Laura is a new grad who is working as an RN at the clinic for a year. She had been emailing me before I came down, but this was our first meeting in person. I love her already! She is great and very welcoming as well!! Overall, I was so blessed to meet such awesome people and we all clicked right away. They all took me out to ‘Rotisserie Chicken’ a little chicken place in the West End (town a little bit away from Sandy Bay which is our town). The food was great and the company even better! Also I had a chance to meet some of the other clinic staff who were also eating there.

Sunday was the perfect day to get myself sorted out and turned around. I didn’t really have any jet lag, which is wicked but I slept really well that first night! I got unpacked in the morning, and we went to church in French Harbour (again, another town prob 45min drive from here) at Bob & Debi’s church. They go to an Island church but the service is in English. It was quite the experience too! I really enjoyed it though; the service was lively and I got a lot out of the message. The worship was excellent, it was led by this big Black lady named Miss Myra, and man can she sing! Picture a typical southern black choir..and you get the picture! J  Then after church we went down to Infinity Bay (best local beach I guess) in West Bay and went swimming/snorkling. I’m terrified of fish, but I decided I’d give it at least one try.. and I actually liked it. The water is spectacular!! So warm and so clear! And after a few minutes getting adjusted to the act of snorkling, I was all set. Debi & I snorkled around in the shallow water and I saw a ton of fish.. even my first barracuda!! A few times I got pretty scared and panicked but overall it wasn’t too bad.. I definitely want to go again this Sunday.  So its been quite the adventure already! Facing my fear of fish and learning to snorkel! 

Monday, Jan 31st/11   First Day at the Clinic!

First day at the clinic today!! It was actually really great! I was super nervous this morning, I just didn’t know what to expect and was so nervous that I would be the only one who had no clue what to do,that I would make some dumb mistake, that I would be useless, that my Spanish wasn’t good enough, that I wouldn’t fit in and the list could go on.. basically just nervous about everything. Bob walked me there this morning (its prob a five min walk) and there were tons of patients outside waiting when I arrived, a half hour before we even open. And thankfully Laura, my new friend, who happens to be the equivalent of the nurse manager, met me and showed me around. There were quite a few volunteers starting today, probably 7 newbies and more who had been here in the past at some point. So I wasn’t the only one lost at sea.. and since the clinic is run entirely by volunteers they are very used to people being ‘new’.  Laura gave all us newbies the tour around and the basic rundown of what would happen. There are 2 pharmacy students who are taking over the pharmacy duties, which is great ‘cause it’s nice to have someone constant in there who can get used to where everything is etc. and since they are there, it means I won’t probably be in there very much for the first few weeks. They are really sweet girls too, so I’d say I’ll have lots of friends! So basically, patients come in and register with our receptionist then wait until a nurse calls them in for triage (I’ll likely get to do this but we had to old pro volunteers in there today, which suited me just fine.. ) and then after triage, they return to the waiting room until a Dr calls them in for a consult. We have a paediatrician, gynocologist, dentist and 2 GPs at the moment, so lots of Dr’s can see lots of patients! Then after their consult with the Dr, the patients return to the waiting room while the pharmacy fills their prescriptions (basically everyone walks away with at least one prescription, whether it’s Tylenol/advil or multivitamins or medications for a specific condition). Then once the prescriptions are filled by the pharmacy, the nurses take the baskets of meds out to the patients in the waiting room and provide education on how to self administer their medications properly.  So my role today, was to shadow Laura and get a sense of the routine and be helpful where I could.. with the medication education and any other nursing related task. So I just watched Laura for the morning, but by midday we were so busy that I began to do education independently and I even got to do a dressing change. Plus I assisted one of the Drs with a few exams etc. We just go full tilt until all the patients for the day have been seen, and by that time today it was nearly 3pm. I was wiped! And I stopped at a little store on my walk home to get a diet pepsi and man, it hit the spot! I took a few photos on my way home, to give you a sense of my walk.. pretty sweet eh?!

But all in all, today was a fantastic first day, better than I could have ever hoped for!! Hopefully the rest of my days here will be just as great!

in scrubs on my first day at the Clinic

view on my walk home from the clinic (outside the store where I buy my Cola light)

Wednesday, Feb 2nd/11  Another great day at the Clinic!

So today I got to do triage at the clinic! This means that I get the charts that Angie (our Honduran receptionist) pulls from the files after she registers each patient, and call the patients into the triage room. After they come into the room, I take vitals, wt/ht and ask them what brought them into the clinic. Basically I find out why they are here, do some initial assessment and data collection for the Drs and then decide which patients are seen by which doctors and priortize etc. It is crazy busy and you just go constantly because by 7am, the clinic is full of patients and it doesnt slow down til well after noon! Its also a great place to practice Spanish because not only do I have to ask basic questions like 'step onto the scale' or I'm going to take your blood pressure', but I also have to be able to ask 'why do you need to see the Dr today?' and then understand and interpret their answer. Its crazy and always an adventure!! Some of the stuff you come across is pretty nuts! lol But its also a blast! So on top of doing triage, every once and awhile I'd get pulled off to help assist with this or that, or perform some nursing procedure like give an IM injection or something. The clinic has a lot of 'non-medical' volunteers who are busy sorting donations and doing a lot of the behind the scenes stuff.. even counting medications.. but meds can only be administered by a nurse and we always double or triple check everything. So there is no shortage of things for us to do. Ohhhh, and we do EKG's!! 

Which is wicked! We have an ancient, donated but fully functional EKG machine. Laura has trained me on how to do EKG's and I have done them under her supervision! Its tons of fun! I'm getting more and more comfortable in my role at the clinic and my days are getting a set routine; like I get up at 6am, eat my breakfast and do my devo on the porch overlooking the beautiful water, get ready for work and walk to the clinic for 7:30 am.. etc. We are getting new volunteers in tomorrow and the next day, which is exciting. Bob mentioned to me its funny how quickly I got into things and have started to look forward to training the 'newbies'! lol when only a few days ago, I was (and basically still am) a newbie! 

Bob & Debi's son, David is here visiting them now too. Debi took David and I to West Bay to photograph the sunset and it was beautiful!! I'm not nearly as good a photographer as they are, but I'll post a few of my pics anyway:

   

Thursday, Feb 3rd/11

Today was crazy!! I worked half the morning between triage and other nursing duties in the clinic.. it was fun, did some fun nursing things like gave some more injections etc. Then Dr Patrick (all Dr's go by their first names here..) who is an American that spends prob 6mts of the year in Honduras and the rest in Arizona; decided to take me on a field trip. The clinic has agreed to partner with a local church (in Flower's Bay, so 45 mins away or so) to do a health fair because they had mission group in. Dr Patrick was going to take me and another non medical volunteer to help out, but we got caught up at the clinic and were over 2hrs late leaving, so he decided we'd just go and see if it was even still on. When we got there we realized we had missed the majority of it, but the mission group had it pretty under control anyway (they gave away vitamins, toothbrushes etc and did health education, which was great) but the big draw for people to come see us was that we were offering free HIV testing. However, this didn't exactly go over really big with the church crowd, plus it would have been pretty intimidating to go into a local church to get a HIV test.. even though it was confidential, simply asking for one would show you were sexually active (which for the unmarried or youth, would be looked down upon). So ultimately we only did a few tests and the who fair seemed like a bust.. but then on the way back, Dr Patrick suggested we go to the local brothel and see if we could test some of the sex trade workers. I thought he was joking, so I was like 'ya sure, lets do it'.. lol.. but he wasn't kidding. We drove into Coxen Hole (the main town where the cruise ships dock.. this is key, because in general these brothels are only there for tourists.. locals dont have the money to pay for sex and even if they did, they could likely find a 'loose woman' who they wouldn't need to pay).. anyway, the brothel wasn't actually that busy because the cruise ship was docked in Mahogany Bay not Coxen Hole that day, but there were still like 30 ish people there. So we walked in and asked the owner if we could test her girls.. and she gladly agreed. So I spent like 3hrs or so, in the courtyard of a brothel, testing sex trade workers for HIV! We worked and worked until we ran out of supplies. The owner was so pleased we were testing that she told us to come back next Tuesday when the cruise ship is in because 'all her girls' will be around then! Dr Patrick was super excited about this and we plan to head back next week armed with way more supplies and people to help. I was exhausted 'cause I did all the testing and Dr Patrick did all the paperwork that accompanies it. But all in all it was a GREAT field trip! It started out seeming like a waste of time, but ended up being such a sweet learning experience!! Plus, who would have thought I'd be in a brothel, testing women for HIV.. like seriously!?! It was awesome!!

Some of the volunteers are heading back tomorrow, so it was their last night in Roatan, so all the volunteers went out for supper in West Bay and we had a blast! They are just such a fun bunch of people!! I've been so blessed to be here and have all the opportunities I've had thus far, and I'm not even a week in yet!! 

Unfortunately, now that I've spent a few hours online trying to get caught up on whats going on.. and update everyone, I don't have time to write a post for today. But this should keep you all busy reading for the time being. If you want to know about anything in particular that I'm doing feel free to comment or send me a message via facebook or email. And please feel free to share this blog with anyone you think might enjoy it! :)
Thanks for all your support and prayers! God is doing amazing things!!