Shoulder to Shoulder - Day 5

I am completely exhausted. I helped with taking overnight call on Tuesday night / Wednesday morning. On Tuesday we woke up at 4:30 to hike up to the cell phone tower. The view was amazing. We got poured on during the walk back which was actually nice. Taking call was good. A woman came in at 11:30 in labor. She did not have the baby until about 6am. So we were up all night with her. At one point I fell asleep on the dining room floor for 20min. Then after the baby was born, a little boy, we had breakfast and got ready for the day. I was able to observe Dr. Rubin in the clinic. It was women’s health day so he taught me how to do ultrasounds on pregnant women. It was really interesting. Mostly in the clinic and in the field it seems like we see a lot of hygiene related problems (cuts or bug bites that get infected, fungal infections, things like that) and many pregnant women. They have very large families here. The men do not want the women on birth control. Some of the women sneak and get it but mostly they just keep having babies. The woman that came in was last night 43 year old, delivered her 9^th baby, and will probably have two or three more babies before menopause. So after learning ultrasound and lunch we went to deliver stove-building parts to families who have not been able to afford them. It was a great, long, exhausting day. I had dinner at about hour 40 of being awake and passed out at 8pm.

Thanks to Dr. Ta I was able to assist in my first delivery! The mom was so amazing.
Dr. Ta with mom and baby Welcome rain shower

After sleeping really hard last night I woke up this morning at 5:30 to jog with one of the other girls. It was nice but very humid. We got back just in time for breakfast. After eating three of us went in the Chiquita truck (a big moving truck) to deliver more stove building supplies to San Antonio. The drive was quite an adventure. The road here are more like ATV trails and some sections of just rock mountain face, it would be a blast to have a mountain bike here. One section of road was so rough and steep it took us three tries to get up after rolling backwards down. It is amazing, I was laughing so hard I almost wet myself! During the drive we would spot little houses high in the mountains. Many people live two hours walk from anything, probably why their general population is so much healthier then ours. We got home from stove supply delivery, had lunch, a little nap, and then I helped in the children’s library a little and observed in the clinic for about an hour. We had an amazing dinner, tortillas filled with cheese, pico, and steamed broccoli. Now I am exhausted and ready for bed