MANGYAN OUTREACH

Yesterday we did an outreach with one of the native tribes. It was so beautiful up there in the mountains. The hike was shorter than expected because we drove the bus a little farther than we should have up the narrow muddy path. We ended up getting stuck but some members of the tribe came and helped us push it out. I don't have any pictures because the batteries went dead on my camera, but hopefully I can snag some from somebody else.
It turned out to be a relatively short clinic, which was for the best since most of us were ill and the tribe didn't provide lunch. They did feed us these really weird bananas that were baked. They tasted exactly like potatoes, so it was a welcome change from rice.
I pulled some more teeth which was so much fun, still don't have the magic touch when it comes to injections, but what can you do. Hopefully pracice will make perfect! We saw mostly ear infections, which isn't overly exciting. The funniest thing was this women who had internal hemerhoids but refused to accept the diagnosis. The doctor kept explaining it to this woman but the woman kept telling the doctor she was wrong. We don't know what diagnosis she was looking for so we just gave her pain killers and vitamins.
We saw our first severely malnourished baby. He was just over a year old, and barely even awake. His eyes were clouding over because of a lack of vitamin A, and his skin was peeling off. His mother had died two years ago and the father didn't really care for the child. His aunt was the one who took care of him most of the time. He was given a glass of milk (the powdered stuff, no nutritional value) some mornings and that was it. We are also sure he has pneumonia and maybe TB. The baby needs to get to the hospital, but we couldn't take the baby without the father's consent. The father wouldn't be home from work until 9pm, so we talked the chief to convince him how sick the baby is. The chief wouldn't release him but said they would bring him into town the following day with the father. Please pray that he keeps his word. If the baby doesn't get to the hospital he will die. We gave him some vitamins, and paracetamol for his fever. We kept him in the clinic for a couple of hours and I fed him a rehydration solution. He perked up quite a bit and was able to hold the glass himself, he even ate some rice. But he is still in the danger zone and the tribe doesn't know how to care for him properly in his state. He needs to be hospitalized, but we did all we could do. I'm going to try to get to the hospital tonight to see if he is there.