Wow, long day. Got up early this morning to go down to the clinic with Scott so he could do some internet work before the day got going. I got out my phone and set my alarm so I could be ready to go at 7:00. Unfortunately, I forgot that I hadn't used my phone since I left New York, and so it was still on ETZ, an hour ahead of Haiti. This meant that when I set my alarm for 6:30, I really set it for 5:30. I didn't realize that til I was up and dressed and looked at my iPod, which said it was 5:45. Fail. I laid back down for about an hour before getting up again.
After breakfast, Faith, Grace, Scott, Denise, and I went down to the clinic. First order of the day was sonography. Since no one here knows how to use the sonogram, Scott and Denise experimented with it for a while. When they felt somewhat comfortable as to the workings of it, they brought in the first patient. Young female, maybe 25 years old? She looked basically like she was 10 months pregnant with a 12 pound baby. But. . . she wasn't pregnant. There is a ton of fluid in her abdominal cavity and upper thorax. Sonography didn't show much to the inexperienced eye, although Scott and Denise thought it might have been something with the liver, given that there was so much fluid. Lab tests showed no problems with the liver, however. Tomorrow there will be a fluid tap attempt made to drain some of the fluid off. Hopefully that will ease her pain and make it easier to diagnose her condition.
Second patient was an older man, 65 years old, who also had slight swelling. Again, nothing conclusive was discovered through the sonogram. Scott later did a consultation with the man and found out that he was a heavy drinker until last year. That fact, combined with the liver and kidney results that came back rather poor from the lab tests, led Scott to believe that the swelling might be due to liver degeneration.
After the sonographies, I stayed with Scott and Grace and listened in on consultations on 8 or 10 people. Oh, I forgot to mention that Scott also lanced an abscess on a older teenage female. It was under her armpit, likely caused by a sebaceous gland getting clogged. It was...yummy. :p Unfortunately with abscesses, it is very hard to numb it because of how deep it goes and how the abscess is formed. I think she was in a significant amount of pain. The rest of the day passed in relative peace with Scott and Grace and we stopped around 3:30 when we ran out of patients. I stayed in the office for another hour or so checking email, then decided to work on the sonogram. Earlier in the day, Scott had expressed a desire to see if we could connect the sonogram to a computer in order to at least take pictures if not do a video feed to a radiologist or tech in the States. I worked on trying to get that set up for about an hour with no luck. The sonogram machine was really intended only to have an output to a larger screen, not to connect to a computer. The only thing I found online regarding connecting to a computer was the ability (with software) to download hi-resolution pictures to the computer. The software likely came with the unit when it was new, but who knows where that stuff is now.
We have 8 visitors not including the Wilson family. They are just staying the night. A fellow named Chuck has a ministry called Truth Ministries and he brings teams short term (often just a few days) to Haiti. They stayed last night at the Trueloves and staying tonight with us. Tomorrow, Steve will bring them down to Mole so they can fly out. That makes for a rather full house, and of course tonight would be my night for dish duty. Joe and I did the dishes (I found out he is 13, not 12) and Grace was kind enough to help out drying and putting them away. Doing dishes for 18 people is not a easy chore. :p We had pizza and coke tonight, which was soooo good. Yummy!!
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After dinner and dishes, Scott and I went down to the clinic so he could do a bit more computer work. Also took one of the couples that are here as guests so they could send an email or something too. I slept, jounaled, emailed, facebooked, and played boggle on my iPod. Quite a productive evening. :-D
The Wilson kids, Grace, Betsy, and I played Dutch Blitz again tonight. The Wilson kids are getting better at the game and hopefully will provide much competition.
Mmm...guess I should take a shower and head for bed.
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