Mas caballos out and about!

Downtown Valle

Downtown Valle

Painting Projects!

No good missions trip would be complete without painting something...We worked on several painting projects at the Adventist school next to the hospital during our time in Honduras...Beginning with some final detailing on the animal alphabet a group of LLU student (including one of our classmates) started during spring break. It was cool to know we were building on and continuing on a project our classmates had begun.

Serpiente

Zorro

Mariposa

Quetzal (see below) of Honduras

Reno

The (almost) finished product. Before we left we added the words for each of the letters, but I didn't manage to get a picture.

Here we transitioned to a new project of "Jesus and the Children" precious moments style, on another building. We were all impressed by the artistic abilities of Dr. B L (mural designer), K's paint color mixing/project directing abilities, and with a lot of teamwork brought this project to completion.

Beginning to take form...

Almost there...

Shoes + a few other details = Beautiful Finished Product!

The Elements

No good missions trip blog would be complete without some of the challenging and exciting elements (local wildlife, power outages, a bathroom light that flickered enough to give anyone a seizure, an unpredictably intermittent hot water schedule, the semi-wild dogs on our hike to the falls) we encountered.

Scorpian #1 Found in K's Backpack the day after Roatan...we hoped we didn't bring it all the way from the island.

Scopian #1 was quite determined. In spite of multiple backpack shakings, it still hung in there--resulting in quite a hilarious video.

The Quite Large Cockroach Discovered in my Shoe

I was Skyping peacefully scorpion #2 came marching towards me clearly with the intent to attack and gave me unpleasant scorpion filled dreams the night before we left. Scorpian #3 was found by A in her bed the morning of our departure. Indeed, this fond farewell from the scorpions made us slightly less sad to depart.

NaCl (see white chunks)--found it's way into quite a bit of the (otherwise would-have-been-delicious) food, much to our dismay.

Although our trip was incredibly dry for being the rainy season there was lots of thunder and lightning. When it did rain it came with force. The downpours were incredible. The other day the rain woke me up from a nap, it was coming down so hard.

 Incredibly, against all odds we survived!

Conquering Blood Pressure...

July 6, 2012
In spite of lack of blog posts we didn't decide to stay in Roatan the rest of the trip...After a fantastic time in Roatan, a long travel day back to the hospital on Tuesday--taxi, ferry, taxi, bus, taxi, other bus with 12 adults and 6 kids--14 total hours of travel was quite the experience in itself. Covered in record # of mosquito/bug "picadores" bites. Overall, quite epic fun/adventure. We hit the ground running with a health expo on Wednesday morning, a brigada/clinic in Tegus on Thursday. Over 80 people came to the health expo on Wednesday. I worked on the computer making calculations of people's "biological age" and giving them their print-out based on age, body fat %, exercise and eating habits and other parameters. Thursday I tackled my fear of taking blood pressures.

Taking blood pressures is indeed an important basic tool, and yet being basic does not make the technique trivial (and this is confirmed by other first year medical students). Every time one takes blood pressure (in my experience) there is a small adrenaline surge and inner sigh of relief upon completion when everything goes as planned. Though with increased practice (especially thanks to OSCE exams) one grows less and less concerned about complete silence in the room and all the stars aligning at the exact time you are taking blood pressure measurements in order for you to be holding all the equipment in the correct position and hear the Korotkoff sounds. Then coming to Honduras, a different type of sphymanomometer used by the hospital added a whole new element (and added apprehension) to the blood pressure taking equation. In spite of the times Dr. L or Dr. M had asked us to take BP on a patient going fairly well even in the face of apprehension, every request for BP felt like a new adventure.

In our brigadas, health expos, or even taking vitals Sundays in clinic we always have one or two people taking blood pressures. Thus far when the topic of choosing stations came up, I've avoided the BP/vitals station, and K stepped up to BP like it was nothing (like she possibly even liked blood pressure taking). I readily acknowledged my terror of taking BPs to myself, but the argument in my head went something like this. Realizing my terror, I also realized the most obvious solution to overcome my fear would be to volunteer to take upwards of 50 people's blood pressures at one of our events. The terrible downside of this I feared, would be to either would leave someone with "hipertension" and its terrible consequences walking the streets of Honduras undiagnosed, or (more likely) we would have a giant backup of people at the blood pressure station as I made someone wait another 5 minutes to retake their blood pressure after unsuccessful attempts on two arms already.

This line of thought had been going in my head for a while, and I knew that it would only be a matter of time until my time came and I could no longer avoid the blood pressure station (in fact it became sort of a trip goal to volunteer for the BP station, conquer my fears, and possibly even be a BP expert). Finally, a week ago Thursday, we were discussion station posts on our way to a brigada clinic and K didn't jump to volunteer for BP taking, and I knew, it was my time to conquer the beast. So I squeaked out an, "I'll take blood pressure." And that was that. Thankfully, I had a compadre--S was joining me as my ally in BP taking.

Surprisingly, after quickly making friends with a sticky sphymanomometer valve, the things I most feared--taking way too much time and holding up the entire line or pure and simple, utter failure--did not materialize. In fact, taking our time, plus some, at the blood pressure station helped to spread out the line and somewhat improve the backup in the line that inevitably occurred before the "talk to the doctor" station. There were, however, unanticipated challenges. Primarily, the noise differential between a doctors office and a brigada is notable, to say the least. In contrast to the quiet doctors office, at the brigada there are people mulling around, loud excited talking, people tapping the table while waiting in line, babies grabbing stethoscopes, and plenty of wind blowing. Realizing these elements the first blood pressure I started, I had a moment of total respect for K, who totally uncomplaining, had never even hinted at the additional challenges of BP taking at brigadas. Yet, in spite of these added elements with supreme focus I could hear the steady, rhythmic tick, tick, tick of Korotkoff sounds stand out from the background cacophony of sounds. Worst case scenario (which were not so bad) when suspecting a higher than normal BP or sounds were indistinguishable from the background noise, the second arm would be requested, "Necesito su otro brazo, por favor," for BP confirmation. 

In fact my original fear of not having enough time was so far from realized that we had time to make friends with precocious 9 year old little Paula and her 12 year old brother Christian, who were really curious and excited to talk to us. We exchanging important details like our favorite colors and classes in school. Sadly, they left while we were in the middle of blood pressure taking, and we didn't have a chance take a picture with our new Honduran friends. When we were leaving the brigada, driving on our way out of the neighborhood we saw them and got to wave goodbye, and their curious smiling faces will remain with me.

Adventure to the Isle of Roatan

Houses on the way to the "brigada."

View on the way to the "Brigada"

More gorgeous views of the countryside.

This blog is incredibly behind the times...Lacking even the completion of our group over two weeks ago when 4 more LLU med'ers joined our medical and other adventures.  In spite of the content here which has been much more about the random, fun, adventures, there has been quite as many delightful, educational, and challenging medical/work related adventures. It has been fun to see different members of the group contribute different strengths...K has contributed her artistic talents to directing the mural painting project of "Jesus and the Children" at the school (pics to come)...D's Spanish skills have helped immensely for various important challenges/random adventures such as tracking down cheese for pupusas on our trip from Julio the best cheese seller in the town...M (the Argentinian nutritionist who has been adopted into our group) has been a welcome ally in relaying gluten allergies/vegan diet needs to the kitchen staff, and making sure B has enough to eat...B has taken it upon himself to be a (usually) welcome comic relief...to mention a few hidden and shining talents of the group.

Last week we did our first health expo at a church in Tegucigalpa, did a "brigada" setting up clinic in one of the more rural areas, started Spanish lessons, finished a painting project at the school started by other LLU students on their trip here over spring break, started painting the mural of "Jesus and the Children," had 2 game nights, and learned how to make pupusas.

Tomorrow we embark in the wee hours of the morning on a grand adventure to the beautiful isle of Roatan, home of the second largest barrier reef in the world, and according the the very well traveled Dr. L the most beautiful beaches in the world. On a side note...One thing is for sure, in Honduras they have taken the concept of "take-out" to whole new extremes. We went out for pupusas (my first time eating out since we got here!) after our "brigada" last week. We were paying at the end and B decided to get a coke. He was walking out with the glass bottle of coke and went back to ask if he had paid for/could take out the glass with the coke. Turns out the answer was "no," but, no problem, they just poured the coke into a clear plastic bag and sent him on his way with a straw. (Which of course precipitate many comments about the sort of thing you might find in a hospital that resembled the coke-in-a-bag setup). Tonight we were exploring our meal options from the cafeteria for the long bus followed by ferry ride to the isle. Inspecting, the contents discovered granola in a bag. I said "Hmm how are we going to eat these without bowls," K said "I think this is like trail mix to eat out of the bag." As M was explained to us the process behind reconstituting the powered soymilk into soymilk, we realized indeed, breakfast ("desayuno" one our our first words we learned really quickly) tomorrow is granola and milk in a bag.

Schoolhouse Housing our "Brigada" Clinic

Delicious Pupusas!

Caballos Out and About!

Horse tied up at the corner of our street. This is apparently a popular hitching post. Later in the week we saw a different horse and at another time a mule.

Horse grazing on the hike to the falls.

My favorite of the random horses we have seen wandering free in the neighborhood. Yesterday, somebody rode by on him.

Caballero--there are quite a few around town.

Half of a mule

Horses Downtown

Have decide to write in themes...starting of course w/ my favorite topic...the horse. Will probably continue to add pics to this post as well as we encounter more horses on our travels. We possibly might get to ride some....

Sabado...mas tarde!

Cow.

Weird pink spotted plats that are everywhere.

Brilliant macaws in Somebody's yard!

Don't go anywhere without the barefoot shore.

I almost forgot, one of the best parts of Saturday...We hiked to this waterfall that is named after the swallows that live behind the waterfalls (I forget the name though). It was very pretty, and a tour of the economic disparity in Honduras (huge mansions next to shacks), and nice to have some invigorating exercise since arriving.