Sunday, February 7, 2010

Wisconsin

About to give a ceftanir shot.






Today was another clinic day…this time in Wisconsin. Apparently a long time ago the University of Wisconsin helped settle a small town about 8 miles north of Francia. We had to stop for about an hour at Santa Clara for the doctor to excise an abscess that he found when we were there on Tuesday. So we didn't get to Wisconsin till about 11:00. We ate lunch and set up the pharmacy in one classroom and the examinations in another classroom…similar to last clinic. This time I was seeing patients with Jeff and we saw a lot of patients with the same complaints. Every other person here seems to have some kind of parasite so we handed out a lot those drugs. In fact before we began the clinic we lined up all the kids and handed out albendazole to them like candy. Sanitation is pretty serious problem here among the Miskito and parasites can be contracted pretty easily from contaminated water or food. When people bathe in the same stream where they dump animal waste its not surprising that these disorders are so prevalent. Most of the patients we saw today were also women and many of them presented with urinary tract infections so we also gave out a lot of bactrim. I got to give an antibiotic injection to a girl who came in with an infected cut on her knee…not really a big deal but probably the highlight of the afternoon. Now we're back on the hill and I should be reading for class tomorrow but I'm definitely too tired to do much more thinking now so I'll probably do it in the morning.


Later: A couple of hours after we got back there was a minor emergency with a woman from the village who had gotten in a fight and had a very high blood pressure. It was a patient that we had seen with the doctor last week and had complained of TIA-like symptoms. When we arrived her systolic BP was above 200 and here diastolic was something like 180, it looked like she might have been having a panic attack but it was hard to tell. When to the clinic and got some captopril, an ACE inhibitor, and atenolol which is beta blocker. By the time we got back her BP had improved and she had calmed down quite a bit, the doctor gave here a couple of day supply of both of the heart meds and we left. On the way back we hit up the one store in Francia; the owner brings back drinks from Waspan and puts them in a cooler so it’s the only place to find anything cold for probably 30 miles. We took the last two cold cokes from the cooler which was a good break from lukewarm water.

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