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.

Class to day was super fun. I got to pull some teeth! The hardest part was giving the anesthetic injection, pulling the teeth was pretty easy. I can't believe people are willing to be our practice patients. This wasn't an official outreach, we just went to the nearest community and asked if people would let us pull their teeth out. They needed to be pulled anyway, but there is no way I'd let somebody with no training pull my tooth.

Here are some pictures from our weekend off. This is the first phase of my sunburn before the shoulder tops burned. The sandcastle was built by some guy that morning. Every morning he builds a new sandcastle, it takes him nearly 8 hours.




Tomorrow we are going on outreach to one of the native tribes. It requires a one hour hike in the mountains. I'm really excited. Outreach is my favourite part of being here. But there is a small problem, a few of us might not be able to go. Some of us have caught a pretty serious case of "the ring of fire". And seeing as there is no bathroom there it would be extremely awkward for us. It could also be a health risk to them as they do not have proper waste disposal. Please pray that it will go away by tomorrow, we are quite unwell and the outreach was planned to include us. Ironically, we have prepared posters, a puppet show and a skit on how to prevent diarrhea.

BACK TO WORK

I got back yesterday from Borocay. I had a really good weekend off. We went snorkeling, parasailing and cave hiking. I got a wicked farmer tan (well, more of a burn despite the fact I put on sunscreen twice before going outside) though because I was wearing a t-shirt over my swimsuit. The next day I put on sunscreen only up to the burn so that my shoulders would burn and I would have a normal tan. Didn't work. The top part of my shoulder burnt, but not all the way to the previous burn line. So now my arms are burnt and my shoulders are burnt, but there is a blindingly white stripe seperating the two. Add to that the burn on my face is now starting to peel. I look like such a dufus.
Snorkeling was super fun, I saw heaps of Nemos and Dories. My mask was broken though so I kept getting salt water in my mouth and up my nose. When I first put the mask on I started to hyperventilate because it stops you from being able to breathe through your nose and I felt like I was suffocating. My lungs were sore the whole day. After about half an hour though I felt more comfortable. I think the guide thought I was looney. After snorkeling we went to a private beach for a while. Just as I jumped out of the boat a wave came in and knocked me feet out from under me, thus planting me firmly on my butt in the water. The guide and boat driver had a good laugh.
The most awkward moment of my life happened to me the next morning. I won't go into detail because I would rather forget the whole thing. I went for a swim early in the morning before the other girls woke up. There was some great waves coming in and I ended up finding some little Filapino kids to pla with for a bit. After being there for about 45 minutes this guy came over and started talking to me, it was no bug deal because he was gay so I didn't feel threatened. That is until he told me he was a bisexual, gave me his hotel and room number and told me to meet him back there at 8pm. Yikes! Not my favourite moment. Needless to say I didn't go anywhere alone that night.
Other than that things are going well. I can't wait until our next clinic on Friday, I absolutely love working with the people. It is frustrating though because we don't have the chance to follow up on the patients we see. So please pray that our one-time efforts will be sufficient to help them and also pray that we would make the right choices for treatment. It is difficult to know what to do with patients you know can only be helped with longterm care. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers

WEEKEND OFF

Hi everyone. Hope everything is going well at home. Everything here is good, if you ignore the effect a virtually all rice diet has on your lower digestive tract!
Not much has happened the last few days. A typhoon just missed our base, but we got lots of rain. It's been raining the majority of the last few days so the church and bible studies that we do on Sunday and Tuesday were cancelled. We walk to the lecture hall in knee high deep puddles. It's still over 30 degrees though sot he water is welcome.Some place the in town don't have drains so he water builds up in the streets, sometimes shoulder deep. When it rains all the kids come out and swim and bath in the puddles.
We've been doing a couple of extra hours of class the last few days to make up for the weekend off we are getting. Yay, urine analysis!
I'm going to be heading to one of the nearby islands Thursday night to relax with some of the girls. We're hoping to go snorkling and banana boating.
I'd post pictures but there is dead bug in the USB port, so maybe next time.

I hope you can see all these pictures, some of the ones in the previous post got cut off.


We did and overnight outreach the last couple of days in a village a few hours away from where we are staying. We saw some crazy things but we were able to help a lot of people with serious problems. I got to inject anesthetic into dental patients for the first time. Felt pretty bad for the first guy I did, but we asked first to make sure he was okay with the fact that I had never given anybody a needle. There was one poor old women who had severe decay in one of her front teeth. So bad that the infection ate through the root of the tooth, through the jaw bone and out of her chin. When we pulled the tooth she bled out the bottom of her chin. We saw a man who had a serious skin infection on his legs that had been there since he was 1 year old. He is now 37. We gave some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories so hopefull it will clear up. We also saw a man who was 71 years old that was in the begining stages of a heart attack. He was so thin because he worked 10 hours days carrying bricks and doing construction and he never stopped to eat. I'm 21 and can't imagine working like that in this heat, let alone 71 years old. We also diagnosed quite a few children with various forms of TB. It's so sad because they will probably die soon because we don't have all the proper treatments and they cannot afford to go to the hospital. Unfortunately we also see alot of people taking advantage of the free medicine we give. We saw a little girl who looked perfectly well and when we asked her what was the matter she couldn't remember so she had to go back and asked her mother. So her mother came over and told us what the girls problem was and exactley what medicine she wanted. She got very upset and stormed out when we wouldn't give it to her because what she wanted was an adult medication for this girl who was 10, and the symptoms she said the daughter had didn't add up. We also saw an elderly women who was so depressed she wouldn't even look or speak to us. Her husband had brought her in to see if we could make her happy and well again. We don't have anything to help mental illnesses, but we gave her some multivitamins and ibuprofen just so they wouldn't walk away empty handed after coming so far. We also saw a girl who was ate who had severe abdominal pain. After talking to her mother we found out that she was on a diet and wouldn't any other than a little bit of rice. She was bigger than all the other girls because she was half American, but she was no where near being overweight. SHe was only 8 years old.

We see alot of patients with very serious problems, blood pressures of 200/140, cysts, cancer, heart disease, etc,. It's really hard because we don't have necessary diagnostic tools and as a one time clinic we cannot not give the long term care some require. We give them all the necessary medication we can but that's usually only about two weeks worth, most need more than that and repeat check ups to monitor their condition. But we do the best we can and most people are very gratefull for it.

It was a very long and tiring weekend both physically and emotionally. Didn't get much sleep because we slept on concrete floors and all the emotionaly stress makes it hard to sleep at night but they are going to give us a weekend off here pretty soon. When we got home last night we went to the restaurant opening of one of the former Marine reach staff and had a delicious meal. Much better than the fish heads we were served in the village(although I am thankful for the meal they cooked us). Then we went and relaxed by doing some videoke. I highly recommend it, it was a blast. This is Annemarie and I singing "Stop! In the name of love".