Today was another great and exhausting day at Common Hope. In the morning, I split off from the group to spend some time in the medical clinic while the rest of the group went back to the construction site to continue working on the house. I spent the day with Dr. Sean, an American from Wisconsin in his fourth year of medical school. At first I was shocked that they would allow someone who had not yet graduated from medical school work as a full time doctor because it didn't seem possible that he had enough experience to really know what he was doing. I asked him about that and he told me that many of the people that set up farmacías (pharmacies) are not qualified and many Guatemalans go to them for medical advice. Dr. Sean is definitely more educated and has had some hospital experience to draw from, and from what I saw today I was impressed by his knowledge. We started the morning by seeing hypertension patients. The way the clinic at Common Hope works is that patients with certain conditions come on specific days, for example Wednesdays are hypertension patients and Thursdays are diabetic patients. The patients we saw this morning come in once a month for a check-up and to see how to improve their hypertension. After these patients, Dr. Sean and I saw patients aging from four to sixty-seven with a wider range of issues. During each appointment, I sat in the examination room with Dr. Sean and listened to the patients describe their symptoms. I also got to listen to heart and lung sounds and even tried to look in the pupils of one patient, although I didn't really see much (probably because I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for). After the patients left, Dr. Sean would explain to me any Spanish medical words that I didn't understand and other information about each patient's condition.
Hana, Caroline, Brian, Tyler, and John went back to the house that we began building yesterday to continue working on it. With the large slabs of concrete that we brought to the site yesterday, they built the floor of the house by laying them down and then filling in the cracks with concrete that they mixed themselves. It sounded like really hard work, and I know they were happy that they had the afternoon off from construction work.
In the afternoon, I went back to the clinic to shadow Dr. Sean again, and Caroline returned to the dental clinic. Hana, Brian, John, and Tyler went to the library at Common Hope where kids would usually be doing homework during the school year. Today, they did art projects with a few kids that were there and played soccer. The boys said that the young Guatemalan kids were much better at soccer than they were! After a long, exhausting day, we met Jenner back at home where he cooked us an amazing meal of pasta with a chicken red sauce. All seven of us sat down to a nice family dinner where we shared stories about our day and enjoyed Jenner's amazing food. Afterwards, Hana, Caroline, and I went out to get some ice cream and are now very excited to go to bed. Tomorrow is another day of construction, and hopefully we will have pictures of a finished (or almost finished) house!
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