Thursday

Yesterday, Wednesday, Nick and I were able to take a taxi to go see my sorority sister who lives down here in Managua. She is a nurse here and works with a few schools and we toured a clinic that some of the students from a special needs school were attending to get dental checkups and blood work. We also went a saw a hospital that was very, very shocking. After this, Nick and I had some lunch in a restaurant and went to the supermarket to buy some snacks for the kids in the village where we work. I was a little bit sick during the day yesterday so when we got home, I spent the afternoon sleeping and waiting for the group to get back from our clinic. We had dinner at the hotel and all played card games and hung out until we went to bed. Full days usually lead to very, very early bedtimes for us!

This morning we woke up and went to our clinic at 730. We were able to see over 20 patients this morning. I went with nick and our translator during the middle of the morning to the market to get a piñata and some snacks for the kids in the village. One of my patients in the morning had kidney infections and all sorts of health problems due to dehydration. She didn’t drink water because she didn’t like it and because of this, she only drank coffee and coke. I was thinking of ways that I can encourage her to drink water and I thought of crystal light packets. They don’t have these down here and so we bought some powdered “Tang” packets for her at the market as well. Even though this wouldn’t be the ideal drink, this will encourage her water intake and hopefully will help with some of her problems. I was able to give my first shot today! I was very excited about that because it’s one of the things that I’ve wanted to do on these trips. It was vitamin B complex. Apparently there is a huge vitamin B deficiency among this population so the doctor that we worked with today offers it to adult patients or parents of patients if the patient is a child.

In the afternoon, we hung out with the children in the village and did the piñata. I handed out the beanie babies, coloring books and crayons that were donated by friends in Omaha and the kids LOVED them! We gave them all sorts of snacks and toys. They were so excited! We came home tonight and got into our triage groups and chose one of our patients to present as our case study to the group. We all presented our cases and thanked the ISL staff for their work in the clinics. After this, I took a quick nap on the hammocks and then we had dancing lessons, which was quite the adventure with our group, ha!