Honduras: Here I Am.: learning.

i'm at home today. i have a lovely sinus infection and respiratory congestion. it's like they say about druggies, hang around them long enough and you become one. i've been hanging out with patients all the time and now look at me. this at least gives me time to update here and upload photos. i've been here 4 weeks to the day, and have 4 weeks left. the first 3 weeks were absolute craziness. being part of a group here is always an adventure, and i've definitely been all over the place, doing all sorts of different things, with three different groups! one of the best parts about the first 3 weeks was the medical clinics. we pack up plastic bins full of donated medicine, bandages, vitamins, etc and set up usually in a church building in one of the villages we're working in. we divide the room into triage, doctor station, and pharmacy. we have translators set up at each station...they're pretty important. the first clinic we did was in los pinos. we were going to start by handing out 40 numbers to the anxious people outside the building. unfortunately an errant blank notepad and a well-meaning church member caused that number to rise to 70. THEN families were taking their number after being seen and handing it to another outside the gate. i'm not sure how many repeats we saw before we finally started collecting the numbers. we saw TONS of patients (approx. 350) and i learned so much. i was at gayle's side the whole time, listening to lungs and hearts, looking in ears and down throats. experiential learning is such a huge part of medicine, and i am so, SO blessed to get so much of it before i even start med school. a good teacher is invaluable, and gayle was amazing. we had some pretty crazy cases come through. there is so much more to being a doctor than diagnosing and treating. more about that in another post. it takes a lot of strength to sit across from a 7 year old boy who we suspect has a dissected abdominal aorta and calmly explain that he needs to go to the hospital. In the states, he would have immediate surgery. when you're in a little church building on the side of a mountain, there's not much you can do except hand a piece of paper with the name of his illness to his mother and strongly encourage them to proceed to the hospital. luckily gayle had this strength....i sat there stunned, fighting back tears. this past semester i was in honors physiology lab, where we were assigned hypothetical cases to research and diagnose. during our cardiovascular unit i was assigned a patient with a dissected aorta. she was in critical condition, but she was sent to surgery immediately and recovered quickly. this surgery is very serious, and knowing the aptitude of the local hospitals, i don't even know if they could successfully perform this surgery. what was going through my head at this point? CRAP. WHAT...I...HOW...CAN WE...CRAP. yeah i know, not very poetic. you really shouldn't lie to patients. more importantly...you shouldn't freak them out. we didn't lie, but we didn't divulge the full gravity of the situation. now, keeping someone else calm while having a silent panic attack is a skill i have yet to acquire. working on it though :)the years that lie ahead in my medical education seem so daunting, and actually practicing medicine even more so. books i can learn, memorize if i have to. but knowing how to trust and be trusted by, calm, comfort, and chastise patients will take so much more concentrated effort. now for those of you who are already drafting emails telling me to reconsider my career choice because i actually have to work on the way i behave around patients, chill. some of it comes naturally. when i'm talking to a patient about their symptoms or explaining how to take their medicine, i am relaxed, using simple terms and joking around a bit. i am starting to activate different skills, aspects of my personality that i've just never had the opportunity to use before. and i love it. what an amazing life challenge God has set before me. yeah i know, He's been pretty absent from this post so far, but definitely not from everything i've been doing.so, to be honest, i like the feel of a stethoscope around my neck. i like being introduced to patients, listening to them, speaking their language, explaining their illness, and hearing "gracias, doctora" when i give them their meds and send them on their way. it's a really good feeling. it could easily go to my head. it doesn't because of the loving, all-powerful and gracious God i choose to follow every day. every day i spend in the clinic or in another village i am humbled, almost beat to the ground because almost every day i use the words "No puedo..." in conversation. "I can't..." Even if i were the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the world I couldn't fix a 7 year old boy in the church at los pinos. at the clinic we can't give blood or urine tests or do ultrasounds or x-rays. we rely on medicines donated from the states, and we definitely don't have every type of medicine our patients need. i'm learning medicine by leaps and bounds, yet there will never be a day when I can fix everything. especially here. i'm not sure how doctors who don't believe in the ultimate Physician go to a third world country and practice medicine. because in these helpless moments, when a solution exists in other parts of the world but not here, I pray. I can't fix it, but I can pray to the God who can. it's almost forced, like i literally have no other option...which is probably good for me, seeing as prayer is a reflex for me only in extreme situations. so as I am confronted with my limits on a daily basis, God is teaching me to push them and accept them at the same time, relying on Him more completely than I ever have in my life. here i am but a humble student...being led toward God every day, because sometimes its hard for me to do the walking on my own.I'm thankful I have the motivation to keep blogging. it's been difficult to find the words lately. enjoy the pics!!!! love, annie