Haitian Adventure

Travel day! We woke up at 3:30 and were on the road by 4:45 am...... so early! It is a good thing we start early through because traffic starts to pick up around 6. We did. It break down at all and we had the fancy new bus! About a half hour in we got a road block. Some truck had pulled off to the side of the road and the. A car got stuck. Our bus could not get by. A few guys got out and moved the car and after a few scary moment where I was convinced we were going off a cliff we made the turn and were on our way. I slept 90% of the way( surprise surprise) and when I woke up we were 75% of the way there. This was a much easier ride than the way to PDP! We arrived at our hotel and immediately I put in my bathing suit and hopped into the pool. After two weeks of hard work it felt great to be splashing around a pool at a fancy hotel. I hung out by the pool for s few hours and the hopped in the shower( hot water!!) and took a nap. Dinner was buffet style with lots of veggies and food I hav...

Last day of clinic😳 I  so sad that clinic time has come to an end, but alas all good things must come to an end eventually. Luckily I will be back in September ! Today was a lot of wrapping up all of my patients. I saw most of the people I have been seeing for the past two weeks to give them heirbqound care supplies as well as instructions on their dressing changes. Most of the patients have been coming for years and are well versed in what they have to do, but it is always good to review. I saw my little girl again today. The hypergranulation tissue I was trying to get rid of with the play dough was much less then yesterday which was great to see. She was also started on a nutrition program today and will be followed by an American EMT who now lives in Haiti. I showed her how to do the wound care so she will do that as well. It makes me happy to know that this girl is getting the care that she needs.  I saw a few ortho patients today. I dry needled a knee and a lower back to...

Teaching day!!!!! I got to go into town and teach a group of 1st and 2nd year nursing students about wounds. It was a very interesting experience. The school was two rooms with no electricity. The kids did their labs outside. The desks were like the school desks we sat in a kids back in elementary school. I was having flashbacks to the stories my dad told me as a kid about his school days. The kids were engaged in the lecture and asked great questions. It was fun watching them during the lab part. I was teaching them how to debride and dress a wound. As I was talking to the kids I found one of them Jd recently burned his leg on a motorcycle and had crushed up amoxicillin and put it in his burn. Needless to say , I told him to come back to the clinic with me so I could clean the wound and dress it . After teaching I cam back to the clinic and treated wounds for the rest of the day with one or two ortho patients thrown in there. I did get to needle a patient independently which was fun. ...

Teaching day!!!!! I got to go into town and teach a group of 1st and 2nd year nursing students about wounds. It was a very interesting experience. The school was two rooms with no electricity. The kids did their labs outside. The desks were like the school desks we sat in a kids back in elementary school. I was having flashbacks to the stories my dad told me as a kid about his school days. The kids were engaged in the lecture and asked great questions. It was fun watching them during the lab part. I was teaching them how to debride and dress a wound. As I was talking to the kids I found one of them Jd recently burned his leg on a motorcycle and had crushed up amoxicillin and put it in his burn. Needless to say , I told him to come back to the clinic with me so I could clean the wound and dress it . After teaching I cam back to the clinic and treated wounds for the rest of the day with one or two ortho patients thrown in there. I did get to needle a patient independently which was fun. ...

Today was another crazy wound day, but a lot of repeaters that I had told to come back. The wounds are all healing well. It is amazing what anwound can do when it has a dressing on it ! It is about900000 degrees today. This is the first day where I was like Wow, this is hot! But since I live the heat I don't mind . The rest of the crew however was not so pumped . That is all for today!

Today was the day of moto wounds. I saw at least 5 people with crazy , chronic goopy wounds from motorcycles. Lots of bleach dressings used today for sure! In addition to wounds I saw several people with back and neck pain. I was able to manipulate one of them independently !!! Go go gadget ortho skills! I am learning so many new skills here that hopefully I can carry over tinto my practice at home. Even though I will probably not use the techniques I am learning here exactly how I would at home, they will be very helpful for me. At night we had a salsa lesson and got to dance the night away. It is great how we are able to work so hard every day and then relax and kick back at night. Makes for a fantastic trip😜

 What a day!!!! We saw about 150 patients today , which is a lot for the first day. I saw 6 patients with wounds in the morning as well as an adult who had never been able to walk. Seeing him was the highlight of my day. I wanted to build him something that could help him stand. I have no building experience , but luckily we have an engineer and contractor in our group who helped shape the stander we made. After about 5 hours and several shoe, brace and material trials. We finally had a stander we could use. It was based off of pulleys and levers and using a cement fence that he had at home. I got to go to his home and help set it up. It was really neat seeing his home and neighborhood. We had a whole crew watching us set up our device. It did not turn out exactly how I wanted, but he was happy with a huge smile on his face. He even danced a bit for us at the end before we left. Made my day🤗. When we got back we did some manual therapy on each other. I have cupping done to my...