Super productive

I was on a mission (or several) today.
First, I had clinic from 8-12. We were back at Atucucho (a clinic that serves one of the poorest areas of Quito). I saw a little boy, who we saw on tuesday. He had a respiratory problem. His breathing was better but he has white spots on the back of his throat so the doctor needed to prescribe additional medications. There was a 19 year old who was pregnant with her second child (the first was born when she was 15). I got to count the fetal heart beats per minute and learned how the doctor measures the height (in cm) of the baby and calculates weight etc. The baby was underweight for 19 weeks so the doctor encouraged the girl to eat more, specifically every three hours. However, the girl mentioned that she only suffered morning sickness when she did not eat, so I am guessing that for financial reasons (or other reasons that I have not thought of) she does not maintain a very good diet/eat regularly. That was pretty sad, and from there it only got harder. A 15-year old came in with her mother and said she was there for a sore throat. The doctor had the mother leave the room to ask personal questions. It turned out that the girl had a hard life at home and was having other personal issues (I dont feel comfortable writing them online and I want to respect the patients privacy). I think for me what was the saddest was that the girl said she had no one to talk to about all that she was going through, so the doctor recommended psychological services.

I thought about taking tomorrow off to pick up some stuff for my hike/run (it is going to be verrry cold so i need wool socks and running gloves) but I am growing to really like Atucucho. It is really hard to see such poverty and I think it is tragic that some kids here are forced to grow up so young. But, I like that I am able to help out and I am learning a great deal. Most importantly, this really helps to put things in perspective. Yes, the premed classes are hard but at the end of the day I am going to have the ability to really help people as a doctor and this becomes very apparent at a place like Atucucho. Dr. Guaman seems to be a counselor, therapist, mother figure, doctor and has become a part of the community and I have a great deal of respect for her and the work that she does.

At 12 I headed over to Quicentro with Beth. This mall looks like the Natick collection and my friends and I often meet there for lunch. They got subway. I am sick of carbs so I went to lunch by myself to Crepes y Waffles and got a salad. Then I rejoined my friends to discuss plans for after lunch. I thought a friend was going to join me at Cotopaxi, but most have GI problems and have been feeling under the weather, so the idea of hiking to 5000 meters doesnt seem to appeal to them. But, never one to turn down a physical activity, I decided to sign up by myself.

My friends headed off to buy flashlights and bug spray for the amazon (again..not going because 1) yellow fever is a live vaccine which scares me 2) i have not taken malaria prophylaxis and 3) Ruta de las iglesias!!..not in that order) and I headed over to happy gringo travel agency. I found out that there is no trip on sunday so I decided to go on monday. I am okay with missing clinic because it is maternidad (which we all know I loooooove..not) and beth and caitlin are the students I am working with next week and they will be in the amazon until monday night. Aka we will all be skipping to pursue more adventurous activities and I will not be the only rebel.

From there I cabbed over to the TVentas center to pick up my race packet. I had to bring my passport so I used my super cool neck wallet today. I dont mind looking like a fool because three of my friends had their cell phones stolen last night and I would really rather not have to deal with losing my passport-always better safe than sorry. So I got my race shirt (arguably the best part of these events), number, chip for my shoe and storage bag for any belongings I bring to the race. Then I headed back to rositas-with my passport (those neck things really do work!).

I realized how much my spanish has improved when the cabbies not only understand my attempt at pronouncing the street addresses, but they also try to have conversation in spanish with me. Clearly I have learned something, or have just gotten good at pretending to speak spanish. Regardless, being able to tell cab drivers where I need to go is very helpful here.

Tomorrow I have clinic in the morning and then I will have to go get some things for the race. Then maybe I will hit the gym, though lately I have been so tired after clinic that it is hard to want to do anything. I also should probably start reading some articles for my thesis because I need to talk to Dave (advisor) when I get back to school. Let's hope there is enough coffee in this joint to get me through my day. Talk to you soon!