Clinic

There has been lots of injuries and sickness here in the short time I’ve been here. It has been extremely fun helping out in the clinic.  One of the SM’s just graduated with her RN license and has taken the clinic over since she has been here. One of the smaller boys named Abraham had mumps. The poor boy had a swollen neck for a few days, but then was better within a week.  Praise God no one else got it. There is always someone who is sick or hurt, mostly minor things. However, not too long ago, one of the men working on building the girls dorm was carrying a large rock on his shoulder and somehow it fell right on his head then rolled off. He came to the clinic with blood all over his head. We cut chunks of hair off to see what the damage was, then cleaned it.  That took a long time because there were bits of rock and dandruff from not washing his hair. We put some ointment on all the cuts and scrapes. One of the cuts was really deep, but we decided that it wasn’t bad enough to do stitches on him. 
Another time the older boys were playing Kabaddi a fun tackle tag kind of game, and three of them collided with each other.  Mikey somehow landed wrong and totally broke his clavicle. The bone was concave causing excruciating pain. I could see it poking out of his back under the skin! We got him to the clinic in town, but they sent him back to the orphanage for a couple of days until the surgeon could fix it.  He’s healed up nicely now.
One of the older girls has been sick off and on with difficulty breathing, racing heartbeat and blood pressure. She’s been in and out of the hospital. We are still trying to help her.
Many of the women staff here are always asking about getting their blood pressure checked. Many of them have all the symptoms of diabetes.  Unfortunately one of the staff went to the hospital one night recently and died the next morning from kidney failure due to uncontrolled diabetes. Lots of people were devastated. It makes me mad that their diabetes could have been controlled and taken care of, but people here are so poor and don’t understand or know how to keep their bodies healthy. We are hoping to get a health screening going soon to help with this problem

​Of course we’ve had lots of minor cuts and injuries too.