The Week

I know this is a lot of blogging for a short period of time, but last week was such an interesting week that I couldn’t just skip it. So here you go: enough Meredith blog to keep you satisfied for at least another 7 days.

The Week

Day 1: Stephanie and I got back from the jungle at 9pm on Sunday night. At 8:30 on Monday morning, we were in a car with several other translators heading out to a small town called Concepción. A church from Florence, SC had brought a dentist, a gynecologist, an opthamologist, two pediatricians, several nurses and a few pharmacy people. A local Huancayo doctor joined the group to help with general medicine, and the plan was to offer a 1 day clinic in 5 different locations.

I was assigned to work with pediatrics, and I think I got pretty much the best deal of all the translators. Stephanie was working with the gynecologist and learned a whole range of new vocabulary she never dreamed she’d need. (The title of her blog this week was something like “Yes, my ovaries hurt too.”) Jimmy was working with the dentist and had to physically restrain children who were terrified of the dental instruments and screaming so loudly you could hear them three rooms away. I, on the other hand, got to sit and play with kids all day.

This is my first time working with a project like this, I quickly learned about the benefits and limitations of having a one-day clinic. On the upside we saw far more people in one day that a normal practice could have, and we weren't constrained by people's insurance or money. On the downside, it's a one-time visit, and there's a lot you can't do in a one-time visit.

I discovered that there are three kinds of kids that are brought into a one-day clinic. The first kind, which was most of the kids we saw, had absolutely nothing wrong with them. Their parents would bring them in and say “she won’t eat” or “he’s small for his age,” when really the kid was perfectly fine. For the ones who did have a slight cold, we handed out lots of Tylenol and Dimetapp. And of course, everyone got vitamins. Vitamins were the magic cure for “He’s not as big as his brother.”

The second kind were the children that really had something wrong with them that was easily curable. One girl came in with slight pneumonia, another had a fungus growing on his head. A few children had parasites. These are the kinds of things that are easily taken care of with a little medication, but of course the families had little resources for medication. In these cases the families were always extremely grateful that they could go to our pharmacy and pick up the medicines for free. The limitation is, of course, that if any sort of complication occurred, the family would have to go to a local doctor to follow up.

The third kind of kid we saw were the kids that had serious problems that the clinic could do nothing about. We saw several children with cerebral palsy, whose mothers knew there was probably nothing to do but brought the children out of desperation. There was at least one child who needed a surgery to be able to talk. Several children couldn’t walk, and were carried around (even until age 7 and 8) by their mothers who couldn’t afford wheelchairs. I explained to one mother that if she continued to work with her son’s legs everyday, maybe by the time he was six he would be able to take steps by himself.

It’s this third kind that really accentuates the difference between “developed” and “underdeveloped” places—as inadequate as those terms admittedly are—highlighted solely in the fact that parents in the U.S. have more options and education about their children’s conditions. Not that U.S. parents know how to care for their children any better, but they have the option—for example—of getting a wheelchair and physical therapy.

With the third type of kid, the doctors would just try to be as gentle as possible. We would give painkillers for minor aches, and sometimes tums for stomach aches. And of course we would give everyone vitamins. But you could see in the mothers’ eyes that they knew there was nothing we could really do.

Day 2: San Jeronimo, a little town known for silver work about 15 minutes from Huancayo. We saw 84 children in 5 hours. Yes, 84. They moved both pediatricians into the same room, so I translated for two doctors all day. I learned words I never thought I’d need to know, like “constipation,” “bloated,” “cyst,” and “diarrhea.” Apparently word got out that we gave out candy when we finished a consultation, so we had whole streams of kids saying things like “My head has hurt for the past 20 minutes” or “I get out of breath when I run.” That night I dreamt about translating for an endless line of children and complaining parents.

When we finally got home, Stephanie had to go teach so I went home to relax and stop thinking about children’ cold symptoms. We had soaked some beans, so I bought vegetables to cut up and make into a soup with the beans. I bought carrots, tomatoes, onions, and some seasoning, but was hovering near the section that had hot peppers. I knew the peppers were really hot (they make a sauce with them, but you can only use a few drops at a time), but the vegetable lady convinced me that if you take all the seeds out of them, they’re not hot at all. I decided a little bite in the bean soup couldn’t hurt, and so decided to buy just one small one.

Stephanie will tell you that what happens next is apparently “quintessential Meredith.” I don’t know what she’s talking about.

So I get home and start cutting up vegetables. I get to the pepper and carefully start to slice it and take out all the seeds. Somehow—and I still don’t know exactly how this happened—I wiped my face and got a seed in my eye. That’s right—pepper seed in the eye.

I ran screaming from room to room until I finally found a bucket of water. (Remember they turn the water off in Huancayo in the evenings.) I pried my eye open and started scooping water into it. Unfortunately, my hands were still covered in pepper-juice, so the more I rubbed, the more the burning spread all over my face. I’ve never actually sprayed myself in the face with pepper spray before, but I’m pretty sure I now have a good idea how it feels.

I eventually got the seed out of my eye, but was then left with a burning face. Remember, this is all being done in a bucket, so at some point I’m just splashing the same juice back onto my face. I finally manage to get up enough to grab the soap and switch buckets. I washed my face over and over for about 20 minutes until I could finally stand to take my head out of the water.

When Stephanie came home, she saw me standing in the kitchen with a bright red face and puffy eyes. There were two buckets out, and water splashed all over the floor and up the sides of the walls. “Um, Meredith, did somebody die?”

Day 3: My eyes are actually a normal color the next day, which is apparently a good sign according to the doctors I’m working with. Yay, I’m not going to go blind.

We’re working in the Methodist Church at El Tambor in Huancayo, which is luckily only a few blocks from our house. It’s a pretty nice venue for the clinic. Pediatrics has the entire upstairs room, plus a waiting area. Even better, we have our own working bathroom. I can’t even tell you how upscale that is.

There are quite a few kids, and again I’m translating for both doctors. We have so many that we end up working through most of lunch. This is not altogether tragic, as most of the lunches they gave us were terrible. Someone somewhere got the idea the Americans wouldn’t want to eat a Peruvian lunch, so they gave us boxes with terrible sandwiches (we’re talking 3 slices of white bread), a piece of cheap cake, and a juice box.

Luckily, the church staff had decided to cook their own lunch. A few of us lucky ones got invited back to eat our choice of spaghetti, potatoes, and anticuchos. (Anticuchos are strips of cow heart skewered and roasted. I have yet to try one.) I accepted a plate of spaghetti, thankful that I didn’t get the boxed lunch that day.

All was fine until about four that afternoon. We were especially busy with several serious patients, and I was talking fast to try to translate everything the doctors were saying. With little warning, I walked next door to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That damn spaghetti. Not the first time it’s happened since I’ve been here, but it’s never exactly pleasant.

The doctors were, to say the least, a bit surprised. They send me home, where my festivities continued for another three hours. I was supposed to teach a class at 6:30, but around 5:50 I realized I wasn’t going to be able to leave the house for quite some time. I called and canceled my class, telling the secretary that I was pretty sick. Unfortunately, the term I used (“Estoy enferma hoy”) is the same term women apparently use to describe their menstrual cycles in Peru. To this day I am not sure if the secretary thought I was canceling classes because I had started my period.

Day 4: By this time, people had begun to notice that my Facebook status was “Meredith is wondering why the universe apparently hates her.” I have to admit, I wasn’t too pleased with the universe either. I rolled out of bed Thursday morning, grabbed 3 things of Gatorade and crackers, and dragged myself to another day of translating muttering something like, “I hate my stomach.”

Luckily, the day was quite light. Very few kids, and we even had two translators for pediatrics. I finished the Gatorade, and was even glad to see the white bread at lunch.

By this time, we had discovered that we could buy movies for about a dollar. I went home that night, slept 3 hours in the afternoon and woke up to watch “The Holiday” with Stephanie when she got home.

Day 5: It’s amazing how much better life looks when you can eat. I woke up Friday morning actually pretty darn excited to be alive and in Peru. Our clinic that day was in Cullpa, in a beautiful little retreat center in the country. We had a lovely room, and a wonderful view of the mountains.

We finished up fairly early, and hung around so the pharmacy could sort medications to donate. I taught class that night (not my best class ever, but whatever), went home, and drank boxed sangria we’d bought at the grocery store. Thank God it’s Friday.