Thursday, March 22, 2012

Great week that ended with Rotavirus! :(

I wrote this post on Monday while I was recovering from rotavirus.. just didn't get a chance to post it til now.. so here it is.. and hopefully I'll have post from this week up tonight or tomorrow! Trying to get better at posting frequently! And some pics on my next one too if I can!


Another week has flown by! Man, I never seem to have enough time for things here… It seems like when you live on a Caribbean island, life should just slow down or something.. nope! Not true! Each day is so jam packed and I feel like I just have so much to share with everyone!!  Clinic has been busy as always and we are undergoing some changes amongst the staff and I have moved into a new role. I will be working some now as the charge nurse/nurse manager of the clinic. It has been a big switch for me, but I feel like God knows what He is doing, so I’m just trusting that He will sort it out. It has been a transition, and I feel like its more of a shared job anyway but I’m just moving a bit more into leadership than I was before. But prayer for this new role and the transitions would be greatly appreciated. We saw some really cool stuff at clinic last week too… a lady with active TB (who greatly benefited from some donated N95 masks, because she can now protect the grandchildren she cares for from getting it), guy with serious chemical burns on his right arm/leg which we cleaned and dressed (he will continue to come to the clinic to have his burns debrided/cleaned/dressed on a regular basis), we had a 28wk young pregnant lady on the fetal monitor because she showed signs of preterm labour and we gave her some medication to hopefully stop the progression of labour (Kate was having a field day reading all the fetal monitoring strips!! ), a little girl with facial injuries from a car crash, and so many more. We are enjoying lots of opportunities to use our skills to help and teach, such as putting in IVs etc. So the nursing side of things is going really well.

Tutoring is going well. We are really getting into a groove with our students and I’m really enjoying Emmy. She takes some getting to know… she is a typical preteen girl, but I think we have bonded now. After tutoring we ran into Bob & Debi (the family I lived with last yr) in the Colonia and ended up going to their house for awhile. I spent some time catching up with them and Kate enjoyed hearing about their shop (quick promo for them.. check out www.made-in-roatan.com). Also they are going to help us set up that adventure we have planned for the group coming from Belfast on a cruise ship this coming Thursday. 
Wednesday we had a nice going away party for Trish, one of the volunteers from here who was returning to the US. It was a nice chance to have everyone hangout outside of clinic and we had a really great lunch out. In the evening we had a bunch of people over to our apartment and taught them to play Dutch Blitz! It was hilarious!! But it has really caught on, we’ve played it a number of times since then... I almost wish we had 2 decks so we could play bigger games! And man, my competitive nature is really coming out, I kept yelling ‘cheater! Daniel you are cheating!!’ ironically, it didn’t seem to be effective! Lol.
Friday there was an ‘American’ band playing a big concert here and it was a big deal.. so we all went to this concert. It started over an hour late, in typical island style! And to be honest, I enjoyed it, but the band sounded exactly like every other Caribbean band here! But it was a cute night out and it was fun to say we did it... and we did some good clinic promo.

Saturday was a day of jam-packed fun! I started early in morning by going to Bob & Debi’s to distribute some more of the donations I brought down. Debi has a bunch of local girls over to her house on Saturday mornings to learn the art of jewellery making (using donated beads, cord etc) and they sell their creations in Bob & Debi’s shop. For Debi, it is a way to mentor young girls and spend some time investing in them and helping them learn skills and what money they make from the sale of their jewellery helps support their families. Anyway, I had some donated clothes, shoes, toiletries etc which I brought over to the house. The girls were VERY excited and grateful for the gifts! So it started my day off on the right foot! Then a group of volunteers from the clinic all headed out to a more secluded local beach (out behind the dump actually.. on Mudhole Road) and spent most of the day there. It was so nice to be at a beach where we could walk along the shore and not be tripping over hundreds of other tourists! We just really enjoyed the peacefulness and it is a unique beachfront that isn’t like where we normally go. The beach is actually great for beachcombing so we picked some pretty shells and took lots of pics! Then we all had a potluck picnic lunch! I love sharing food and good company here! What a great way to spend my Saturday! We hardly got home from the , when Angely (the receptionist from the clinic who is 19yrs old) called us to ask if we wanted to go shopping through Coxen Hole with her. She wanted to take us around and show us the market etc. So we headed straight to Coxen Hole to meet her. We spent the afternoon shopping in the market and around. We got delicious milkshakes from a stand downtown, that were more like McDonald blizzards (I got Oreo!)! By the time we got home, everyone one else had headed out to celebrate St Patricks Day already. We got dressed in all our green gear and met some of them for supper. Then finished the day off at home with some green cake and sweet game of Dutch Blitz!

Unfortunately.. I got really sick overnight! : (  I got rotavirus! It was absolutely terrible! I’ll spare everyone the details but I was violently ill and much to my dismay (and protesting), I had to stay home from church and the beach on Sunday. Katelyn and Beth gave me Zofran IV before they left for church which took a bit of the edge off my nausea.. but mostly I just had to let it run its course. I was MISERABLE! I could hardly move, I was too weak to even sit up, little alone use my computer or hold a book.. I just laid in my bed all day. I had a terrible fever and when the girls came home that night, I was holed up under fleece blankets while our room was over 30 degrees Celsius. Beth and Katelyn gave me a litre of IV fluids in the house (very bush medicine.. lol. Appropriate equipment, but some makeshift things like we hung the bag on the blinds.. lol). Daniel (one of the pharmacy students) went to the local store to get me some Gatorade and found it closed.. so he knocked on the door to the house next to it, til someone came out and opened the shop so he could buy me the Gatorade! How sweet of him! I was really blessed by how great everyone has been through this!
I am feeling much better today! I wasn’t well enough to go to clinic, but well enough to use my computer! Thankfully it only took me a few days though, most other people with rotavirus are sicker longer.. it was definitely all the prayer and the IV fluids prob helped some too. 

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