We held clinic four days in Naulala...about 1 1/2 hour drive into the mountains from Panajachel. The first two days we were located in a local school and two days at a local church. The drives were always interesting...great sightseeing and understanding that the only real rules of the road... were that there really were not any rules. Sometimes it was better to just be distracted in the surroundings and fabulous company. The drives were pretty fun and enlightening to each of our personalities.
A few of the awesome people in our group
Unloading one of the vans
We set up and took down the clinic daily
We were told that Mayan families had preregistered 80 people daily to be seen in either medical, dental, vision or all three.
We ended up treating just under 600 people in our four days.
This was our triage on day one
Every section required one or two translators...
English to Spanish and Spanish to Quiche (A Mayan dialect)
Our medical clinic was worked by one doctor and a nurse anesthetist daily...
as triage slowed down...then us nurses would assist with the examination and treatment
The pharmacy
Judy-vision expert
Dub (one of our two ministers) had the technical task of assembling eyeglasses
Lisa- dental assistant and one of the four dentists
They did a ton of tooth extractions...everyone wanted their teeth pulled
The dentists provided us an opportunity to pull a tooth if we wanted that experience.
My patient was very grateful and happy
The extracted tooth
Our typical lunch consisted of lunch meat or peanut butter and jelly,
a banana and Chicky cookie
One of the joys of a third world country is the bathroom and toilet facilities. Fortunately, we had toilets...you just had to throw waste into trashcans and these toilets were flushed by pouring a bucket of water into them.
That was one BIG tooth! Wow!
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