Day 13- Mobile clinic, sick girls and Mad Max
I wake up to Donna coming into the room. She has some toast and climbs into her bed. I slowly get out of bed and get dressed. I go out and make the coffee. I walk back in and start talking to Donna. She tells me she is sick again. She has diarrhea and nausea. Oh no, really? I feel so bad for her. I go into Momma nurse role and start offering her all different kinds of things to help her feel better or get more comfortable. I rub some essential oils on her to try and help her nausea and also offer her some peppermint. She won’t be going to mobile clinic with me today. It will be just me and the midwives. Shani walks into get some things and tells us she is very ill. She has been up all night vomiting and having diarrhea. This is not good news. I am feeling so bad for them and want them to feel better. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything I can do. I am the only one who hasn’t gotten sick. The only thing different I am doing is the the essential oils. I would like to think they are helping me not get sick. I mention that to the girls and we kinda agree. It could also be the my tummy is made of stone! I cross my fingers that I don’t get sick too.
I continue to get ready for the day and pack my bag full with the rest of the bags, blankets and headband from my Mom. Today is my last day I can give them away. My last day doing mission work. I get my water bottles from the fridge and grab some snacks. I fill my fanny pack up from the supply closet and I am ready. Joanne tells us that the vendors are here with the art. I get excited, I can’t wait to see what they have.I grab my wallet and tell the others. Donna and Shani are too ill to go. But they need to pick something up for the One Nurse at a Time auction. They give us money and ask us to pick something out for them. We go out there and see many vendors with all their things on sheets on the dirt. It is 0730 in the morning and I can’t help but think they had to have gotten up early to be here at this time. Who knows how far they have come from, how far they walked with hopes of us buying maybe one thing. I walk around and check everything out. The stuff is very similar to what we saw at the ladies house. Just as I have experienced before in developing countries, they try to hustle me into buying things. They follow me around and try to get me to only look at what they have. I make my decision and buy a painting, a couple gifts and something for One Nurse at a Time. I bring it in the house and show Donna what I got. I put it away and go outside and get in the white land rover that's waiting. There is a new driver I haven’t met yet and Pleasure, my interpreter. There is one midwife and she is packed and ready. Donated suitcases are full of donated supplies and are placed on the top of the land rover. We leave the house and pick up 2 more midwives in town. We drive out of Hinche for about 45 minutes out into the mountains. While driving on the very bumpy dirt roads, my tummy starts to feel upset. I am over analyzing my tummy again. I am sure. I am hoping I am feeling this way because of the bumpy road. I throw a peppermint in my mouth and cross my fingers. Peppermint usually works for my occasional nausea. On the way, they're small villages everywhere. My tummy starts to feel better once we are driving on pavement. We arrive to the mobile site and no one is there. A couple ladies start walking ourway. They are visiting someone or doing somethingdown the road while waiting for us to arrive. One of them grabs a broom and starts sweeping the small building we are at. We unload the car and open up the bags. They have 2 portable folding beds. We open them up and cover one with a sheet and the other with a fabric shower curtain. They are in bad shape, but it works and keeps the women off the floor for exams. We take all the usual medications out and lay them on one of the folding beds. One by one, women arrive. Pleasure tells me that this particular clinic is typically small. After we feel like everyone that is coming is there, the education starts from one of the midwives. First though, they sing and pray. Songs are used to help Mom’s remember the warning signs and when to go to the hospital. All Mom’s are encouraged to go to the hospital when labor starts or when they have any of the warning signs. Matwon's are encouraged to bring woman to the hospital or the birth center. MFH pays them for doing this and it gives them a reason or incentive to bring the women in.
She teaches about bleeding, loss of fluid, healthy meals, preeclampsia warning signs and fetal movement.
When she is done, we hand out their charts to them. I help do vital signs and write them down in their chart. It is time for urine dips. The midwife dips one and within a few seconds starts to name off the results. I explain to her via Pleasure, that alot of the results need 30 to 90 seconds before reading the results. She said she did wait that long, but I disagreed. I don’t say anything because I am not there to argue. I do three pregnancy tests. Two are positive and one is negative. The ones that are positive need blood work done. I am given a lancet and told to poke the tip of the patients finger. The first poke wasn’t deep enough. I am used to putting the lancet into a pen like device that pushes the needle in. So, I try again and get more blood. I use a pipette to pull up the blood and then I place it into the reservoir for rapid HIV and syphilis. Good news for both the patients, negative.
One of the woman there has a baby, maybe about one year old. She becomes fussy so I offer her a granola bar. She starts to eat it and I am not so sure she liked it. She made a weird face. It is pretty sweet and I am guessing that this baby has never has something so sweet. She held onto it for a while and eventually drops it. I pick it up and feed the rooster and hens that are all around.
One by one I perform leopolds, fundal height and doppler fetal heart tones on the patients. Most of them were measuring at least 2 weeks behind. One woman was 28 weeks and measuring maybe 23 at best. These women often don’t know when their last menstrual period was so fundal height isn’t very accurate. When there are 4 woman left, I pull out the bags and make an announcement to the woman. I have Pleasure interpret. I tell them that I am giving them a bag that my Mom made for pregnant Haitian women. That I was proud to give it to them to help carry their diapers, blankets and baby clothing. They all say Merci or thank you. But the midwives go on to tell me ‘thank you to your Mom and you for all you are doing for Haitian women.’ I got teary eyed and told them that they were doing more for me than I was doing for them. I don’t think they understood what I meant, but, I did. This experience has really made a difference in my life. I want to devote my life to poverty and humanitarian work. I can not foresee doing anything else. All of course when I am done raising my children. In the meantime, I can only do a little. But it is more than doing nothing at all.
When we are done seeing patients, we pack up the things and put the suitcases on top of the Land Rover. We climb in and make the bumpy trek back to the house. I arrive just before lunch is ready. I don’t change out of my scrubs quite yet. Emily is waiting at the house and she is done for the day too. Tiffany comes back and I ask how busy the hospital is. If it is busy, I want to go there. She says it is pretty slow. I go change out of my sweaty scrubs and put them into the laundry. Lunch is ready and we are alerted by the bell. We go in and eat. After lunch, Emily is craving brownies again. She goes and makes them and we eat nice warm gooey brownies. It is such a nice treat. Thanks again, Em!
We sit around for the rest of the day. The cooks make dinner right after they make lunch before they go home for the night. So dinner is ready very soon after we eat lunch and the brownies. We aren't that hungry, but eat a little bit. We wash our dishes and rinse them in the bleach water. Donna and Shani are feeling a little bit better and try to eat a little. But they call it a night early so they go to bed.
Tiffany, Emily and I decide to watch Mad Max again. We place the laptop on the patio table and pull our chairs around it. The volume is turned up as high as it can go. At night the noise from the street is loud. People talking loudly. Moto's and cars beeping their horns all the time. Music is blaring occasionally from cars. Very, very loudly. Like I am at a rock concert. How can they make it that loud and secondly, how do they afford to buy that kind of stereo system. I have noticed that alot of the campaigning cars have the very loud music coming from them. Kind of a weird concept to think about. 'Hey, vote for me because I am playing blaring loud, deafening music.' The mosquitos and flying insects are attacking me. I go in and spray some DEET on. I hate it so much, but I also hate the itchy bug bites. Unfortunately though, they got me pretty good that night. Good thing I have antimalarials! We relate the movie, Mad Max to our country's current state of affairs related to the election. Kinda a crazy thing to think about.
After the movie, we take our medications, I place my essential oils on again, tuck myself into my net and blog. I have been using the oils a lot more now. I go back and forth between blogging and facebook and candy crush. I just can't seem to fall asleep easily here. Idamae comes in and does her 'I need attention' meowing. I grab her and place her on my bed. She kneads the blanket until she feels it is comfortable enough to lay down. She lays down but doesn't stay very long. I think she has ADD or something :) Tomorrow is our fun, relaxing day. I want to go to the local feeding center and the plan is to leave about 10am. I get to sleep in. Lights out eventually.
