Day 8

The sounds of music blasted by the Filipino’s mixed with the nonstop screeching of our rooster this morning that told me it is time to get up. I was pretty thankful for it this morning because I really wanted to push myself to go for a run. I thought hard about going back to sleep a few times, but fought the desire and went for a run. It was a short 2 mile run,  (I have insanity pure cardio today so let’s not get crazy) through the town nearest to our clinic. The windy path was beautiful and as I got to the town all the people shouted “Hello Joe!” and waved and smiled as I passed. A few of the children started running after me trying to touch me. The game around here if you go for a run is “try and touch the white person.” They won needless to say. I got back and finished a workout, showered, and ate a quick breakfast before heading to clinic. The entire Bicol area today is having a Brown out so we would be without power for the entire day. Luckily, they got the generator working to have the fans blowing and lights working. It was a stormy day with heavy rain on and off which was nice since it cooled things down a bit. I mean I was still sweaty and dying of the heat but it was a lot better then it could have been. I worked with Heather, and the Nepalese physician Ashik. He makes fun of me having a girly voice, and tells me I look like a doll. Then someone gave him the Barbie idea, and here we go now everyone calls me Barbie Doll. Dr. Barbie Doll. That should attract lots of patients. We went through a bunch of patients off the bat, and had a lady come in in a hypertensive emergency. Heather started by getting a line in to give her IV Lasiks. It took a while before she normalized. We saw an incredible young girl with an enlarged bovine heart from rheumatic fever. You could hear her heart beat and see it pounding through her chest from across the room. Our clinic is going to sponser her to try nd raise funds to get her the surgery necessary. Although this is a blog, if you want to contribute to this cause, you would be saving the life of a beautiful young girl with a whole future ahead of her. I gave another cortisone shot IM to another girl that Dr. Schuster pulled me aside to do. It went perfectly and we sent her on her way. We saw more patients with pronounced goiters, a patient with destructive gout that caused a deofrmation to his left foot and another patient with possible Leprosy. A small child with Hirshprung’s disease presented with part of his bowel exposed outside of his body. He is another  The clinical presentations we get to see here are amazing and unlike any other. When clinic was over we had major downpours on and off. The power came on around 5 or 6pm so we didn’t go to Sorsagon because there wouldn’t have been internet until real late. Daniella and I did pure cardio insanity in the pouring rain, on a slippery tile balcony. It was taking insanity to a whole new extreme, and we were just shy from becoming ortho patients for the morning.

After dinner we hung out in the guys room and played card games and acted like idiots until about 9pm, when we were clearly all passing out on one another and had to go to bed.