The Journal

Family Medicine residents

This trip is not just a service journey, it is an international medicine rotation for family medicine residents and pharmacy students, hence, we are also teaching while we are working. We have three family medicine residents-- two from the Univ of Colorado and one from Ft Collins-- and four pharmacy students from the Univ of Wyoming in their sixth and last year. The students and doctors range in age from 23 to 33 years with wildly different backgrounds but a common cause-- serve, learn and experience (our consensus team goals). One of the objectives of the rotation is to process what we are experiencing, so every day, one person takes our team journal and writes. That person then reads it to the team at the breakfast table the following morning. When we are done, it will be written up for everyone to keep. I have been grateful for the thoughts they have shared-- the weathered stoic old man who looked like pictures of a Colombian grandfather rarely met, first experiences serving in a foreign country and seeing the world through others' eyes, careful detailing of the churches and cathedrals we visited in the old town, and writing about shared laughter and silly moments that make trips like this even more delightful.

We laugh a lot at meals and in our short bus going back and forth-- so many ridiculous situations occur in the course of one day, it's impossible not to laugh-- and it helps release stress and anxiety from a very busy day. I probably shouldn't tell you that we joked about our journals entries being one liners, "The soup was very good today" or "Slept well". Well, we thought it was hysterical-- maybe you had to be there.

Today when we arrived at the church--on time-- everything was already humming along. The volunteer had given up on blood pressures so was very efficiently weighing and measuring and assigning numbers. We were able to start seeing patients efficiently. I like efficiency. But then a funny thing happened on the way to efficiency--we started noticing that families were all given the same number, so a family of 5 was all given "19". Yep-- you got it-- if you give out 70 numbers in multiples of the same ones, it adds up! Then we noticed people had numbers we had already seen-- they were passing their # to friends after they left. We had people everywhere. Little kids were running in and out of my little exam space squealing and playing, the older kids were flying the little gliders we handed out over and into people, people kept poking their heads around the sheets to see what we were doing and if it was close to their time. We were short a translator for a third day-- thank goodness Mimi is fluent; we work in teams of a physician, pharmacy student and translator-- ideally.

University of Wyoming pharmacy students

The pharmacy students are really getting great clinical experience, since they work side by side with a physician, as well as dispensing the medications and educating the patients about how to take them. Calvin worked with me today-- his favorite patients were the couple in their 70's, clearly still in love after all these years-- worried about each others health; he with blocked arteries in his legs causing pain and keeping him homebound, she with back pain and bone pain.
Amanda ran the pharmacy today-- a tough job that rivals the busiest Walmart pharmacy. Christine worked with Bridget, and they saw a beautiful two yr old boy with a funny looking tongue-- looked like it had a map plastered to it; he and his father sat and waited all day-- the father started helping me keep track of who was next. Thanh worked with Carrie, after running the pharmacy yesterday. It looked like an ant den today with white costs flying back and forth from room to pharmacy and back again. We gave out a lot ibuprofen, Tums, Tylenol, vitamins and stomach meds. We did start collecting the little pieces of paper with #'s to halt the constant influx of people, but we saw everyone. We lost count after 80. We were late leaving and that meant the Camp Hope kids were late getting their bus back. That made us sad. We finished up our day by taking ourselves out to dinner in the old part of Quito, where we laughed until tears rolled as we told stories about our day, and finally returned exhausted. I can't wait to hear the journal entry tomorrow morning.