Saturday, March 23^rd and Sunday, March 24^th

Today we packed up and left the compound at 8:00.  We went to a little touristy town to shop for gifts and souvenirs.  On the bus ride there, we popped a tire so the whole caravan had to pull over and we all had to get off the bus so that they could change it!  Once arriving in the town we shopped a little and got puposas for lunch before heading to the airport.  It was sad saying goodbye to the brigades staff and our security guards.  Waiting in the airport seemed like forever.  I just wanted to click my heals three times saying “There’s no place like home” and teleport home.  Our flight was delayed, cancelled, rescheduled so many times, that I was worried I would not make it back.  We ended making it to Chicago after flying through Guatemaula instead of El Salvador.  I was happy to finally be back in the states.  Yay we made it!  Road block:  about twenty people didn’t have their luggage and of course I was one of them!  After filling out paper work we finally left Chicago, only to find out that it would be snowing our whole way home…talk about a warm welcome!  The bus was freezing, but I did manage to get a little bit of sleep.  We made it back to Des Moines around 9:15am!  Glad to be home and I can’t wait to show everyone pictures.  It was an awesome experience.  Thanks for all of the prayers while I was gone!

Friday March 22^nd

Today was out final day at the clinic.  In the morning, I worked with Dr. Bzdega, the pediatrician.  I helped her to calculate doses for the children’s medications.  I am now a pro at figuring out Tylenol, Ibuprofen, and Amoxicillin doses in children.  I was difficult to be exact with the doses, because many times we were not handing out dosing syringes with the medications so we had to round to the nearest half of teaspoon.  Since they don’t have a measuring device with the liquid medication, they will most likely be using a household teaspoon, which goes against everything we just learned about pediatric doing from Dr. Bell in class!  Using a kitchen teaspoon could easily under dose or overdose the child.  Aside from calculating doses for the children, I got to witness the process of taking a patient history and review of systems to gather the knowledge needed to diagnose a patient.  I saw a small girl with head lice and was able to recommend a medication to treat this condition.  Of course my head started itching after she left and we all went straight for the hand sanitizer!  A baby that had visited us on the first day of the clinic, came back today since the mom didn’t think he was getting better and his fever was getting higher.  We decided to treat the baby with high dose amoxicillin for otitis media.  I was glad to see that Dr. Bzdega didn’t initially prescribe the antibiotic and told the mother to follow up if the baby wasn’t getting better because earlier in the year we learned about antibiotic resistance and how to prevent resistance.  Another little boy we saw was pretty dehydrated and Dr. Bzdega gave the mother tips on how to prevent dehydration and gave them oral re-hydration salts.  The mother was so thankful for the help we offered her in the five minutes we talked with them that she gave Dr. Bzdega, the medical student, translator, and me a big hug before leaving.  It’s moments like this that I realize that we really do make a difference by coming here on this brigade. 

During the afternoon I was in the pharmacy again.  It was frustrating because we were running out of a lot of the medication since it was our last day.  We had to make many substitutions because of this.  I liked being able to use my professional and clinical knowledge to substitute the medications.  It was a lot easier than in the states, because when we need to substitute something, we have to get ahold of the doctor’s office (which is almost impossible!) before we can make the change. 

We got out of the clinic a little early today.  Around 2:00pm, there weren’t many patients left in line, which I thought was strange because on all of the other days there were always people in line until later in the afternoon.  After talking to some of the younger boys from the community, we discovered that no one was left at the clinic because they were all watching the soccer game.  Honduras was playing Mexico in a World Cup qualifying game.  Apparently this is comparable to the Iowa/Iowa State football game in Iowa!!  I think that the game ended in a tie…don’t ask me how that works if it is a qualifying game.  Could you imagine if the final four ended in a tie??

Tonight after dinner we had a group meeting so everyone could share their favorite parts of the trip and what they learned being here.  It was fun to hear what everyone had to say.  I liked hearing the praise the physicians and med students gave the pharmacy team! It was rewarding to hear that!  I also really enjoyed what our security guard had to say to us.  He was so cute and I had a crush on him the whole week!  He took his job very serious and kept us safe and made sure we made it back safe and sound to our families and friends back home.  He wanted everyone to know that he and all of the other police officers take their job very serious and are working hard to crack down on the crime in Honduras so that people aren’t scared to come here and so more people will travel to Honduras. 

After our group meeting, we had a fiesta.  The locals from Honduras put on a traditional Hondur

an show for us.  It was very interesting to say the least.  After the show we all danced and partied to celebrate a successful trip!

Thursday, March 21^st

Today at the clinic I helped out in the pharmacy all day.  We saw a few interesting cases.  One girl presented to the clinic with a fever of 104 and was throwing up and experiencing pain.  After doing a urine analysis, the physician diagnosed her with pyelonephritis.  We treated this with Cipro and are following up with the patient tomorrow. 

It was fun to quiz and share our knowledge with the medical students.  I definitely think we gave them a more positive outlook on a pharmacists career.  It was also entertaining to watch them use a counting tray.  Someone used it up side down and was counting one at a time, rather than five.  I hope I didn’t look that funny the first time I counted in a pharmacy!!

Tonight after dinner, we drank a beer with Dr. Rovers.  I can finally cross “drink with a professor” off my bucket list!!  It’s raining again so hopefully the sound of the rain on the tin roof will put me to sleep!!

Wednesday, March 20^th

Thankfully there weren’t any spiders crawling all over me last night…or at least that I know of!!

After breakfast, we made the drive to the community on a bumpy and dusty dirt road.  I decided to pull out my notes on depression and schizophrenia so I don’t get too far behind in school. 

At the clinic this morning, I was in “charla” (or chat).  Here we gave the children fluoride, played games such as Simon says and “playa and mar”, and taught them some hygiene tips like how to brush their teeth and how to wash their hands.  It was fun to be in this relaxing environment playing with the children.  It was adorable how protective, loving, and caring the older siblings were towards the younger ones. 

This afternoon, I was in the pharmacy again.  Today I did a lot of dosing for pediatric medications such as acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and amoxicillin. 

When we got home from the clinic, we ate dinner and went up to the store and had a few beers.  As we were sitting outside, it started to get windy and we were watching lightening in the distance.  We thought it would blow over, but we were wrong.  It stated pouring so we went up to the rooms and stood under the shelter.  It was actually fun to experience a thunderstorm in Honduras.  The lightening looked pretty sweet over the mountains in the distance!  (Photo credit to Love!  He took amazing pictures all week for us, many of the pictures I include in the blog are from him!)

First Day in the Clinic!!

Tuesday, March 16^th

Today was the first day at the clinic, so we all loaded into the bus and had a cozy two and a half hour ride to the small community.  It was amazing to see all the people that showed up to get healthcare.  The lines were so long and everyone was patient as they waited outside in the 90 degree weather and the burning hot sun.  Even though many of them had to wait all day, they were willing to do that in order to see the doctor.  It was nice to see that they all did this without complaining.  In America, if people have to wait more than a few minutes for their prescription, they get angry and threaten to transfer pharmacies.  This just reminds me of how lucky we are here and that we should not complain, but rather we should remember that it could always be worse.

 

In the morning, I helped out in the pharmacy.  There were many things similar to pharmacies in the states, but there were also many differences.  Since the pharmacy travels, all of the medications were packed into suitcases and organized according to classes.  When a prescription came in we would grab a basket for each family and gather the medications.  Then we wrote the name of each person on a plastic garbage bag and Eda, the Honduran pharmacist would check the prescriptions and bag them up.  After the medications were ready we would take them over to the charla area where we would attempt to counsel the patients using our best Spanish.  It was frustrating because there was many things I would want to tell them about the medications, but didn’t know how to say it. 

Working in the pharmacy was challenging because we had a limited number of drugs.  Also most of the labels were hand written and not very specific.  For example, most of the medications were labeled take one tablet by mouth once a day.  If the patient was supposed to take two tablets we would have to cross off one and write in two.  Because of the limited number of meditations in the pharmacy, the physicians were limited to only a few choices.  When a doctor wrote for a medication that we didn’t have, we could automatically change it to a medication that was equivalent without contacting the doctor.  It was nice not having to worry about taking the time to contact the doctor. 

In the afternoon, I shadowed Dr. Bzdega, a pediatrician.  It was interesting to see the patient population that came to the clinic.  Moms with lots of children came to Dr. Bzdega.  Many of the symptoms that we treated were cough, cold, headache, and sore throat.  It was interesting because a lot of the symptoms were not serious and were self-limiting.  I think that everyone just wanted to see a doctor when there was one in town since this might be the only chance for them to have access to healthcare for the rest of the year. 

After dinner we worked on data entry to get all of the patients into an electronic system.  Before I went to bed, I found a huge spider (not even kidding, it was the size of my fist!) crawling near my bed.  We didn’t catch the little shit, so I am terrified to sleep.  Wish me luck!!  

Monday, March 18^th

Breakfast today consisted of rice and beans and a cheese quesadilla.  Not your typical American breakfast, but it was delicious.

We spent most of the day packing medications in to one month supply packages and labeling them.  I counted vitamins into bags of thirty and then labeled them.  It was different than the typical product dispensing at Hy-Vee because we didn’t have trays...well we had one that we rotated among the pharmacy students!  We used a piece of paper and a knife and then poured the tablets into a little plastic bag rather than a vial.  It was entertaining to watch the med students count medications.  Some of them were using their hands and others were counting by ones rather than fives.  By the end of the morning they got the hang of it and were pros!

It was entertaining to get to know everyone when we were counting the medications.  I enjoyed hearing the med students talk about their classes.  They only have to take a semester of pharmacology, and don’t have a lot of knowledge on medications until they use them in real life.  I suppose pharmacists really are “drug experts”. 

We met the Honduran pharmacist that was going to be assisting us on the Brigade.  She was wearing a Green Bay Packer t-shirt because her friends from Chicago are Packer fans.  I know we will get along just fine!  I’m a little sad I didn’t get a picture with her while she was wearing her Packer t-shirt today.

For lunch we had rice and meatballs and tortillas.  Following lunch, we went to an orphanage to play with the children.  I wish I knew more Spanish so I could communicate with the children better, but we had fun laughing and running around together.  The children showed us their houses, made us push them on the swings, and played other games such as jump rope and soccer.  One little girl game up to me and asked me for “chickle” or gum.  I was glad I had some to share with her.  Once the children found out I had gum they were all asking me for chickle!   All of the kids loved when we took their picture or took a video of them and then they liked looking at the picture or video of themselves! 

On the way home from the orphanage, we stopped at a little shop and get some plantain (banana) chips.  Although I don’t really like bananas, the chips were actually pretty good!

After a dinner of pasta and chicken, we had a meeting to discuss the clinic we would be going to tomorrow.  I am very excited to serve the community with medical and pharmaceutical care the next few days.  The cold shower felt great tonight after running around with all of the kids this afternoon.  Off to bed because I am exhausted!  Adios! 

And We Are Off!!

Saturday March 16^th – Sunday March 17^th

The long journey to Honduras began at 5:30pm when we headed to Chicago on a bus.  Being the studious pharmacy students that we are, Alex, Jaclyn, Laura and I didn’t waste much time before we got out our notes to study for a bit!  We stopped at the World’s Largest Truck Stop.  It was huge…who knew that there were so many things that one could use to pimp out their semi!  Around midnight we arrived in Chicago and checked in.  We wandered around the airport to look for a place to get a drink to celebrate St. Patty’s Day.  Turns out nothing in the airport is open that late at night.  The plane took off about 3:00am.  I had a window seat and slept most of the flight to Guatemala.  I slept through most of the layover and didn’t even get a picture to prove I was in Guatemala.  At 10:00am we boarded the plane to Honduras.  We had to walk outside to get on the plane so I did touch ground in Guatemala!  The plane was so small.  It fit about fifty people and had propellers!  On this flight I sat next to Brian, a first year medical student from North Carolina.  From him I learned that we were flying into the most dangerous airport in the world because it has the smallest runway!  The flight was beautiful and we landed safely in Honduras!

After landing and going through customs, we met up with the Global Brigades staff and the dental students from Texas.  We loaded the trucks full of our bags and supplies and boarded the buses to head to the compound.    The bus ride was very bumpy, as we were on lots of dirt roads.  The scenery of the mountains were pretty neat!  When we arrived at the compound we had a lunch that consisted of rice, beans, and meat.  After lunch we headed up (about 100 stairs) to our room to put away our bags.  Wow! Thirty girls in one big room with two showers and sinks…this is going to be interesting. 

After unloading our stuff, the four pharmacy students followed a few guys down to the soccer field to play soccer with the boys at the boarding school nearby.  Don’t worry mom, the security guard came with us!  Running around with them was a lot of fun.  They all enjoyed it just as much as we did and they were sad to see us leave for dinner. 

Dinner consisted of chicken and potatoes.  Yum!  After dinner we enjoyed Honduran beer and looked at the stars.  What a beautiful start to the trip.  Before bed, it was a short cold shower.  Can’t to see what tomorrow brings.  Buenos noches.