En Esparanza en la farmacia

Today we took the mobile clinic to Esparanza. Esparanza is about the same distance away as Wisconsin and took about 30 minutes to reach in the deuce. It’s a smaller village compared to some of the other ones we've visited so far. It also sits next to the Wawa river which we visited two weekends ago. We set up both the pharmacy and examination stations in a very rickety one room school. Before Jeff told us that a girl fell through the floor during a clinic several years ago…needless to say I was less than reassured. I was assigned to the pharmacy today which meant that I, and several others, were responsible for receiving and filling the prescriptions that Dr. Linares, Jeff or Maria would write. This involved lots of pill counting, mixing of oral suspensions and asking lots and lots of questions. Our pharmacy is really four tackle box like things organized by drug type. There's a drawer of antibiotics, a drawer for cardiac meds, one for anti-parasitics and so on. Its definitely a learning experience since at first you don't really know what any of the drugs are, but its pretty easy to catch on.

Part of being in the pharmacy also means explaining what the drug is and how to take it to the patient. I've been picking up some medical Spanish along the way and I was stumbled through my instructions earning a few puzzled looks. About half the of the patients only spoke Miskito so we had use our translator Manuel with them. The patients are also asked to pay an examination fee of 10 cordoba or about 50 cents. If the don't have any money they can also give payment in kind, so we always come back from clinics with lots of coconuts and grapefruit. Today I finished giving instructions to a patient who, when I finished, promptly pulled out a single egg and offered it as payment. Although it wasn't quite worth 10 cordoba but it may have been all she had. I stuck the egg in one of the med boxes to pick up later, however since I forgot about it the intrepid egg survived the bone jarring deuce ride back to Francia intact and now may become part of a meal sometime soon.

So its Monday and now five days till we leave for the Corn Islands, internet access, the ocean, cold drinks, fairly normal food and mainly not being stuck in the jungle.