Clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina

Today was our monthly clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina. It's usually about a two hour drive, and we were able to make it in just slightly more than that, even though we were stuck in construction for a little while. The Toyota is "a little" (nearly triple the horsepower) faster than the Mazda, which mostly manifests itself in the ability to pass very slow trucks that are climbing in front of you.

We never really know how many patients we have at this clinic - when we start, or when we finish. People just seem to keep coming up and sometimes, after you've worked for four hours, there are more people outside than there were when you started. Kinda hard on the chi, but just something to know about and deal with!

Including drive time, we had close to an 11 hour day. We had our typical tums/tylenol patients, but several more complicated patients, too. One was a man who we saw before with some... um... male problems. Heidi being a gynecologist, it was nice to have two family practice people here with us. Beth is a family practice resident and Annie is about four months from becoming one.

Without going into too many details, the man had been exposed to some things that could cause male problems. We've treated just about everything we could think of that might be causing the problem, and we treated one more today, but we also explained that guilt and internalization can cause physical problems. He got down on his knees with us and prayed for forgiveness and renewal.

About an hour later, he came back and wanted to know what kind of medicine we'd given him (an antibiotic) because his pain completely went away. Matt explained that this type of medicine can't really do that, but God can.

We saw a patient we treated for infertility (as much as you can really treat infertility here - vitamins and some prayer) who is now four months pregnant. She was so thankful for the medicines we gave her - and we explained that vitamins can't really do THAT, either, but God can.

Some of you may remember the 100-year-old woman we saw shortly after we moved here who has had a hernia for 50 years. She came back in today with a really nasty looking lesion on her face that's probably skin cancer. They say that it's growing. We explained that there's not a whole lot that can be done for this. She's not in the church and Matilde promised to go see her this week and talk to her some more (he's talked to her in the past, but time is probably running out).

We diagnosed a woman with severe hypertension only 29 weeks into her pregnancy. We spent a lot of time with her discussing what she should do (go to the hospital) and what danger signs to look for that constitue an emergency in case they just send her home.

We saw some VERY cute kids who were really not sick, but whose moms could use a little reassurance.

When we got home, we found that Duane and David had been here supervising the start of the construction project. The driveway as you know it is gone. It's now twice as wide and twice as long. Concrete should be poured soon. Matt will go get a cement mixer tomorrow to start with that.

Please pray for our friend Martin's wife, Gloria. Apparently, she fainted in the bathroom today. Martin thought she was dead. She's at home now, resting, but no one has any idea what caused the problem. We'll go over later tonight to take a look at her.

Anyway, the first three pictures are of the girls and the clinic. The next one is of the backhoe in the driveway. And the last one is what used to be our concrete driveway.

Tomorrow is a day off. We have some work to do in the pharmacy here and some preparation for surgeries on Wednesday.