So, I realize I'm not very detail oriented, so I'll try very hard to put more detail into these posts. However, you'll have to suffer through the ideas and contemplation that I also decide I must include :D
Yesterday (Sunday, March 27th) we went to church. It was a great experience just to relax and focus on the Savior and the gospel. Many wards meet in this particular building. There were three having meetings at the particular time we went. There is of course no air conditioning so it is quite warm. I realize all you lovely people in Utah/Wyoming are experiencing snow at this moment, haha sucks to be you! They also have no microphone or PA system, so it's very difficult to hear, and there are quite a lot of people. However, I was quite impressed at how quiet and reverent people were, focusing so much on hearing the speakers. After church we a couple of us relaxed by the pool, ah yes, the place we are staying does have a pool! Again, sorry all you people stuck with snow! Worked on my tan, got some reading done. Pretty fabulous. For dinner we went out to eat. We went to this restaurant called The View, quite fancy, quite pricey, not so much in American terms, but still on the higher side. Everything was in French/Creole, which of course I do not speak. Also, for those of you who know me, I have a tremendous amount of food allergies, of which can get me into serious problems. This kind of prevents me from trying new and exciting things. So I settled with pasta and a cheese sauce, it was good, but everyone else's looked much better. By now you're probably thinking, wait, I though she went there to do humanitarian work, sounds like she's playing! We're getting to that. This was sort of our "day off." It was very interesting though because this part of town that we went to was what you'd consider "upper scale." The streets were clear, people weren't living on the streets in tents, it didn't smell. Seeing such immense contrast is amazing. I suppose that you see this is the US too, but I suppose for me it was magnified.
Monday, March 28th
Getting down to business. Today I went with one of our groups to what we call an outreach clinic. This town that we went to was up in the mountains, about an hour from where our compound is. These people have limited access to any type of healthcare. We took two Haitian doctors with us, there were three nurses, a nutritionist, a social worker, and an aide, plus two wonderful interpreters. I had two primary jobs, the first was triaging, the second was reading the doctor's orders and "filling prescriptions". Basically a quick assessment of the patients chief complaint and associated symptoms and factors. It was difficult for me because I'm so used to being very thorough and being able to communicate with my patients. This is of course very difficult when you cannot speak the language, even with an interpreter. I wish very much that I could speak the language, that I could converse with these people much more. A majority of what we see is headaches, stomaches, generalized pain, sound familiar? We give out a great deal of OTC meds, tylenol, ibuprofen, antacids, vitamins. These people have outrageous blood pressures too. We were very limited this year with meds, especially prescription. There was one we were giving out that had been brought by a previous group, I don't even know what it was! I kind of feel like we're giving these people a temporary fix. A few days, maybe a couple of weeks worth of meds. Is it worth it? This is going to sound cheesy, but it gives much more meaning to Intermountain's "Healing For Life" mantra. Did I just use the word mantra Emily? Yikes. Anyhow, it was a long day filled with many emotions. I want to help these people. Sometimes it's difficult for me to see the good that it does. I hope that we helped them.
