Hi Everyone,
I know it has been a while since I've written, but it just means we have been really busy lately. Last week finished in a rush since we were trying to make up for the Wednesday we missed due to the strikes. The mornings in the clinic have been great. We have been working with a lot of spinal cord injuries and stroke patients, because they don't seem to do much for these patients here. Rather than trying to help them learn how to get in and out of bed, they strap a weight on their limbs and tell them to do a few exercises. In case you don't know, I love neuro! I think the injuries are crazy and I find it very rewarding to be able to help people become more independent. Since most of these patients have remained dependent on their families for everything, we have been able to make a huge impact on their lives. I've really enjoyed it! We have also had some other random patient situations such as a professional basketball player that had jumped to dunk a ball, fell back on an outstretched arm, and ended up braking his arm. Unfortunately for him, in the D.R. this means they cast you all the way from your shoulder down past your wrist for 3 1/2 months. When we saw him he could barely raise his arm to shoulder level, had almost no motion at his elbow or wrist, and was probably never going to be able to return to basketball any time soon. It just amazes me how different the treatment is here.
I also had a very awkward cultural situation with a patient that had returned to the D.R. after living in the U.S for about 5 years. He had suffered a brain bleed from a police brutality incident in New York City. I don't know the whole story but apparently guards in the prison where he was serving time beat him over the head and all over his back resulting in him basically having a stroke severe back problems. Apparently he never received any physical care while finishing serving out his time in New York and decided to return to the D.R. to try to get treatment. I have no idea why he was in jail, but it's kind of one of those things that you're not really sure if you want to know. Anyways, when he started telling us this whole story after we had just introduced ourselves as students from the U.S., it was definitely an awkward moment. Thankfully he was very receptive to us and we were able to accomplish a lot, but it was definitely a unique view of the U.S from the outside.
Tuesday afternoon we also managed to squeeze in another visit back to the batey. While most people went to help hand out anti-parasite meds to the children, I went with a group to follow up with the people we had treated last time. The highlight was our visit to an 82 year old man that has pretty much been bed ridden for the past 10 years. While we saw him for many reasons, one highlight was the resting hand splints we gave him. We put these splints on and this guy was the happiest man on earth. He just started moving his arms all over place with this huge grin on his face. Even thirty minutes later when we had him on his side and were cleaning out the large sacral wound he had on his backside, he was just grinning and moving free arm all over the place. It is the small things here that really seem to make a difference.
On another note, the tear gas bombs have stopped. At least for the time being we can no longer hear them from the ILAC center. The really interesting thing is that this strike has seemed to work. Over the past few days, there has been a huge improvement in the quality of the roads here.....which was what they were protesting. They have been smoothing out the roads and filling in potholes with new dirt. Apparently throwing a bunch of random rocks, chairs, and garbage in the roads along with tear gas bombs seems to do the trick.
We left on Friday to spend the weekend in Santo Domingo which is the larger, more tourist city in the D.R. It was very European and a lively place to be. We stayed in three different hostels there separated by male, female students and female professionals. Needless to say, 15 girls in one room with two showers is an interesting combo. The rooms were cute though and it was a nice change from the ILAC center. I honestly think everyone was just really excited to have some time to sit, relax and visit. We spent the first night out on a spanish plaza along the river front where they had a free street concert and plenty of space for lots of people to sit and enjoy the nice atmosphere. Of course we spent both Friday and Saturday nights out trying to improve our dancing skills. We have somewhat familiarized ourselves with the barchata and marengue...and I'm pretty sure I spelt those wrong. Anyways, the crazy thing is that people don't go out here until like 1am! It is nuts! I don't know how they do it because we would go out at like 10:30 and everything would be dead. Then we'd start to want to leave and that was when everyone was coming out. Of course since we were trying to learn the most about this culture, we pushed through and stayed up for the dancing. It was rough though!
We also managed to find time to take a tour of the city and learn some of it's history. They finished the tour by giving us samples of their local drink...MamaJuana. It was the nastiest drink I've ever tasted! Thank goodness they had Coke on hand to help get rid of the burning sensation. We then went to the Marcado Modelo which is a large market where we bartered for art and other random gifts. I managed to buy a painting for $18 that they were originally asking $106. I almost felt like I was stealing since I got it for less than 20% of the asking price. On Sunday morning we managed to make it down to the ocean for a quick view of the beach. It was a nice walk, but there was this random dog that followed us all the way there and back. I have no idea why because we were not even friendly to it as it looked to be pretty sick. We also managed to befriend a couple of D.R policeman that were guarding a large monument in the port. They let us walk up to the top of the monument, which was made entirely of stone(very impressive). It was a great view and we managed to learn a little bit about the monument from them all though the it was a very broken story since I could only understant about every third word they were saying. It was a random and fun morning out though.
Well that marks the end of our first two weeks here. Half way done with my time here and less than a month until graduation. It's crazy how time flies. Before you know it, I will be back in the states. Until then, I hope life treating you as well as it's treating me here. Miss you all!
P.S. Mosquito bite count: 8....with two of them being so gi-normous that they made the doctor on campus look at them to make sure they weren't a spider bite. So I actually have about 12 bites, because with how much those bites itch, they should each count for 3 bites by themselves.
|
