Friday, July 13, 2018

Visitors

After my month alone as the only English speaker, an American couple came with their twin 7-year-old daughters.  It's been wonderful.  The girls have boundless energy, giggle about everything.  Also tears: from the one twin Clarissa: “more people have Patricia's name than my name! (sob)”  

Veronica Escobar is the mom and a family practice physician.  She sees patients in the mornings and takes children to their new friend’s in the afternoons while I work.  Our pastor, Padre Jose, put out a short publicity notice on the local radio, and business has tripled.  Not sure if it's Padre's announcement, or people just want to see a new face, but we're all glad.   

Veronica's husband Jim is a computer programmer, has resurrected the broken website for our hospital in between child care duties.  He's as welcome, or more so, as the doctors.

An ophthalmology team arrives in 4 weeks, expects to stay a month.  Besides performing over a hundred operations, typically the general medical clinic is swamped with patients, as families who traveled 3 or more hours trying to take care of their other needs.  Right now I'm enjoying the calm before the storm.

Most patients travel long distances to see us, an hour or 2, sometimes 6.  Guadalupe is the only volunteer day hospital of its kind in Ecuador.  I often ask patients, I'm glad you came, but why did you travel so far? 

We charge an all-inclusive $5. per visit, versus 50 or more in private clinics, that's certainly part of it.  In a country where the average laborer earns $400. a month, that's still a bargain.  But were it not for Guadalupe, many patients would effectively have no health care.  The Ecuadorian government tries hard to provide universal free health care to all its citizens, but the system is overworked and underfunded, wait times are a month or more.  Especially for those on the brink of destitution (there are many), the choice is either long waits for free care or rapid care that they can't afford.  

All doctors and dentists here are volunteers.  Patients know they won't be charged for things they don't need, not always the case in the big clinics.  We can feel the trust when the patient first walks in.  And we don't compete with the local doctors, almost all of whom relocated to the large cities once their mandatory year of service is done.  It's a good collegial relationship.


Padre Jose enjoys the visitors as much as I do.  This past Sunday he drove the 5 of us to a local wilderness park, where we trekked 2 kilometers through mud down a mountainside to a series of waterfalls.  There's lots of them here in the foothills of the Andes.  I'm starting to walk normally again as my muscles slowly recover; the twins (after much needed cleanup) never slowed down. 


Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The clinic reopened here in Guadalupe a couple of months ago, after heavy remodeling and is now certified as a Day Hospital.  Since then our census is slowly increasing as word gets out among the community.

We have a local dentist, Mayra Paltín, volunteering for a couple of months.  She trained in Ecuador, but did a couple of year’s internship in Argentina.  She is exacting and particular with her patients; mercifully gentle with me and my stumbling Spanish.  We were the only ones in the Volunteer house, before the arrival of the American physician Veronica Escobar Jim and their daughters. 

  
Mayra tells a story from her training when she and a medical student were doing community outreach, going door to door in a poor farming community asking about health habits.  An elderly woman answered their knock, told them, 'wait a minute', came back with a plate of boiled yucca.  They declined but ate the offered food when the woman insisted.  Washed it down with a small juice glass.   When they were done, the woman told them that was all she had to eat for the week.  The students' tears came, and would not stop; Mayra couldn't help thinking of the widow's mite.  When they finally went to the next house, the residents had all kinds of fruit, offered to them.  The two took a bagful back to the old lady, and visited a while.  The woman had relatives in walking distance, but they seldom came to see her.   Mayra shared that she had learned more that evening than in a month of classes.

Busy Week

The week was a jornada or medical group offering primary care to the  town of Paquisha, and 5 of its surrounding rural <barrios> or vi...