Hello from El Salvador! To be honest, the past week was not nearly as exciting as the first, mostly because we spent three days in transit to El Salvador, plus time to take down the clinic sites in Guatemala and set up in El Salvador. So I was on the ship for nearly a week until I was able to go ashore again.
I did have a few things to keep me busy while we were at sea, like educational conferences and an abandon ship drill. No, I didn’t have to fling myself overboard or anything; we just had to grab a life jacket and head up to the flight deck, where they called muster. If you’re not there, they go hunting for you throughout the ship, and then they have you climb a deck above the flight deck so everyone can see who didn’t show up. Luckily, I had advance warning, so no embarrassing walk of shame for me. I also got to go on a tour of the ship’s engine room. We saw the furnaces, the engines, the giant shaft turning the ship’s propeller, the generators, the desalination plants, and the garbage incinerators. It was incredibly loud and hot (the thermometer read 110 degrees), but it was fascinating.
Otherwise, I got a lot of studying done plus a lot more reading. With no TV and internet that only goes about a kilobyte a second, there’s not much else to do.
But now we’re in El Salvador, docked at Acajutla. Here we can walk down a ramp off the ship to the pier, unlike Guatemala. I’ve been to one of the clinic sites; it’s a stadium with raised concrete bleachers covered by a canvas canopy. There are lots of birds in the metal struts holding up the dome, so you have to wear a hat if you want to avoid being bombed from above. Our clinical areas are located underneath the bleachers, so we’ve been able to keep out of harm’s way. We’re seeing the same kinds of medical problems we saw in Guatemala, and the people are just as grateful for any help we give them.
The patient I think I’ll remember the most was an eight year old girl who was brought in by an elderly woman. She was a beautiful girl with big, lustrous brown eyes. But she has a seizure disorder and has never been on medication. Her left arm and leg are stiff; she cannot walk or say any words other than “agua,” though she can babble with great enthusiasm. Her caregiver explained that even though the girl was not a blood relative, the caregiver had taken the girl from her mother’s home because the mother was not feeding her. The caregiver said that it was difficult to take care of her, because she has a few seizures a week and the caregiver has to carry her on her back everywhere they go. But she said that it was all worth it. While she told me this story, the girl playfully slapped my palm with her right hand. Then she laid her hand in mine and let me hold it for the rest of our visit. It broke my heart that there wasn’t much I could do for her at our clinic, though I did refer her to a neurologist. Even so, these are the kinds of encounters that have made a big impact on me.
Well, I’ll be working hard in the coming week, seeing lots of patients as usual. After that we leave for Costa Rica.
I did have a few things to keep me busy while we were at sea, like educational conferences and an abandon ship drill. No, I didn’t have to fling myself overboard or anything; we just had to grab a life jacket and head up to the flight deck, where they called muster. If you’re not there, they go hunting for you throughout the ship, and then they have you climb a deck above the flight deck so everyone can see who didn’t show up. Luckily, I had advance warning, so no embarrassing walk of shame for me. I also got to go on a tour of the ship’s engine room. We saw the furnaces, the engines, the giant shaft turning the ship’s propeller, the generators, the desalination plants, and the garbage incinerators. It was incredibly loud and hot (the thermometer read 110 degrees), but it was fascinating.
Otherwise, I got a lot of studying done plus a lot more reading. With no TV and internet that only goes about a kilobyte a second, there’s not much else to do.
But now we’re in El Salvador, docked at Acajutla. Here we can walk down a ramp off the ship to the pier, unlike Guatemala. I’ve been to one of the clinic sites; it’s a stadium with raised concrete bleachers covered by a canvas canopy. There are lots of birds in the metal struts holding up the dome, so you have to wear a hat if you want to avoid being bombed from above. Our clinical areas are located underneath the bleachers, so we’ve been able to keep out of harm’s way. We’re seeing the same kinds of medical problems we saw in Guatemala, and the people are just as grateful for any help we give them.
The patient I think I’ll remember the most was an eight year old girl who was brought in by an elderly woman. She was a beautiful girl with big, lustrous brown eyes. But she has a seizure disorder and has never been on medication. Her left arm and leg are stiff; she cannot walk or say any words other than “agua,” though she can babble with great enthusiasm. Her caregiver explained that even though the girl was not a blood relative, the caregiver had taken the girl from her mother’s home because the mother was not feeding her. The caregiver said that it was difficult to take care of her, because she has a few seizures a week and the caregiver has to carry her on her back everywhere they go. But she said that it was all worth it. While she told me this story, the girl playfully slapped my palm with her right hand. Then she laid her hand in mine and let me hold it for the rest of our visit. It broke my heart that there wasn’t much I could do for her at our clinic, though I did refer her to a neurologist. Even so, these are the kinds of encounters that have made a big impact on me.
Well, I’ll be working hard in the coming week, seeing lots of patients as usual. After that we leave for Costa Rica.
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