Introduction

This blog will follow me through my travels and experiences working at a clinic in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala. The clinic sees primarily indigenous (Mayan) patients in a rural mountain community. More than half of the patients are children, and the clinic is expanding its population even more to include more adults. Much of my struggles actually come from the rather universal theme of being a new healthcare provider, in my case, a new nurse practitioner. I'll also try to post plenty of travel stories to keep people entertained, and share some more cheerful stories. I apologize if there's an overkill of clinic stories. Sometimes it helps to tell the stories, even if only for my own sake.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Last Day at the Clinic

Saying goodbye is tough, but the last day at the clinic was much more than that for me. Half of the day consisted of wrapping up the projects that I had been working on, and the other half of my time was filled by seeing patients.

I took pictures with my second to last patients, and they were very sweet about it being my last day. I just wish I got some action shots, but the smiles are pretty great, too. :)


Read the blog I wrote about the suero project, and you can get a sense of some of the wrapping-up we were doing. It was a busy day, but it was exciting to see how much work we had been able to accomplish. It was nice to take a moment and reflect on what was done. We were given many thank-yous, and very sweet goodbyes.

I counted up my totals, for the figures I have to report back to Hope Through Healing Hands, and I saw 293 patients with the clinic, and did formal and informal training sessions, which included 42 people. Cody and I left the clinic with materials to treat malnutrition and prevent and treat dehydration. It has been a really valuable experience, hopefully for everyone involved.
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