So just a quick update on the bugs in my bathroom...after talking to Rachael and doing some brief internet research on google images, I have determined that they were cockroaches. Good thing is, I haven't seen anymore of them since then so the prayers have helped :)
Thursday was a busy day here in Canilla. We didn't have clinic, but there was still plenty to do. Rachael and I worked in the bodega (store room/closet) in the clinic, sorting through the shelf that has all of the respiratory care supplies and medicines. It was quite a mess so we took everything off, cleaned away the mouse poop and dust and then organized everything into different baskets and bins and labeled it all and put it back on the shelves. It wasn't the funnest or cleanest job, but everything looks so much better and way more organized now so I'm glad that I got to help her with that. It's not something that would be fun to do alone. After lunch, we made a bunch of oatmeal cookies to help Lesley out because a group of four doctors/midwives/high school students came that afternoon and will be here until tomorrow morning, so we needed some extra desserts laying around to snack on. We had another time of prayer and then they were here. There's two OB/GYNs, one nurse midwife and her son. They are here in Guatemala for the week doing surgeries and clinics and the one doctor is a close family friend to the Fickers so they came here to visit and help out with clinics today and tomorrow, so we spent the rest of the night chatting and hearing stories from them.
Today we went to a clinic in a village up in the mountains called something that sounds like Tiosh-Chabaj but I know I'm not spelling it right. The Fickers have been going there once a month for the past several months, but there hasn't been a ton of people showing up so they're not sure whether to continue going or not. They don't own or rent a building for clinics there so we brought all the meds and supplies with us and set up in two classrooms at a school- they cancel classes at that school on clinic days. We drove for about an hour and a half to get there and since there was so many of us, we took the pick up truck and road in the back. There were only maybe about 50 patients that we saw, but several of them were very sick. We diagnosed 4 people with diabetes- three were all in the same family, a father and his son and daughter. The daughter's blood sugar was over 600 and the father's was in the 500s (for those of you who don't know, that's extremely high and you could die from BGs that elevated). We had only packed one bottle of IV fluids so Lesley put an IV in the father and gave him some meds and his sugar started to go down. The daughter said she hadn't been able to see out of her one eye for 5 months. It's crazy that diabetes can get that bad without her even knowing she had it. But when there's no doctor and you can't afford any kind of healthcare, what else can they do? I feel like I'm starting to learn more about the medications and what types of things to look for. I wish I could stay here longer and learn more, but I have to get back for school and read books to learn instead of actually doing stuff.
One of the women in the village cooked us all fried chicken and beans and tortillas so we all ate together in one of the classrooms before we left and then we got back to Canilla around 4:30 (after driving home in the rain!). Three high school aged girls from San Andres came today to help translate and they come to Canilla every Saturday to help in the clinic too. So instead of getting a ride again tomorrow they are spending the night here. They are sleeping on mattresses on the floor in the living room and they were watching a movie. Rachael and I came over from the Fickers house and right before I opened the door I saw a cangrejo (crab) on the patio right next to the door. I don't know how it got all the way here, we're guessing it came up here from the river because there's been a lot of rain lately. We called the girls out and they started throwing rocks at it to scare it to move but it just opened it claws at us in anger. They held it down with a broom and said we should cut its claws off but I suggested we just trap it in a bucket instead so that's where it is now. Just another adventure here in Guatemala :)
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