Thursday, January 31st

Had a crazy day in the hearing clinic due to some miscommunication. All our patients were held up being ushered to the clinic because they thought the doctor was to see them first. When no one showed up at the clinic we went to find out what had happened. Long story short we lost a couple of hours in the morning and the rest of the day became super busy. Two hearing aid clinic workers were out sick too!

We saw 25 patients and fit most with hearing aid. Our hearing aid supply is dwindling. No profounds left! I fit a little three year old boy with a severe profound hearing aid. His mother thought she noticed a change, I hope so. His name was Diego and he was so good. He never fussed through the entire procedure, he just smiled.

We have made an initial contact with safe passages and I plan to go with them next Thursday to Guatemala city to a school which was built in the shadow of the dump. Parents who collect garbage are paid by the school to send their children. An American women set the school up to get the children out of the dump. Parents are only paid if their child has near perfect attendance. I am looking forward to visiting the school. Guatemala city is very dangerous so I will travel with safe passages!

We went out for a group dinner to a beautiful restaurant that looks like it should be in the best travel magazines. Tables encircle a pristine pool, candelabras, and a jazz band. The restaurant is called Panza Verde!

Tomorrow is TGIF! We are looking forward to the end of the week and some time off! Our exploration time has currently been limited to our walks home.

Confusion

No patients this morning. The new ENT doctor thought he would streamline the system by seeing the patients before us, but then he came to the hospital hours after we were ready for our clinic. We have 2 team members sick, so we had another really busy tiring day, but with rewards: a longtime patient brought muffins for all of us, and little Diego' s mom was excited to see him react to sound. One man wanted to make sure his hearing aid had a volume control so he could mute his wife! We had dinner at Panza Verde, which means green belly. Green bellies are people from Antigua, who survived on avocados after earthquakes destroyed the city.
Bedtime. Good night!

Wednesday, January 30th

We have had two full days at the clinic since I last posted. Luckily we finished early enough yesterday that we were able to go to casa Santa Domingo an amazing hotel built among spanish ruins. A famous guatemalan artist (Angela ?) has an exhibit there and I LOVED her work so I may come home with a piece if I can do some negotiating. From casa Santa Domingo we took a little open air van, like an oversized golf cart, just outside of Antigua ( the first non cobblestone road I have been on since arriving) up a big mountain to tenedor del cerro a fantastic restaurant. The restaurant is located at an outdoor art gallery!

We have seen almost as many patients in the last four days than the clinic saw all of last year. I am feeling more confident in my ability to fit a hearing aid. We have probably fit about 50 hearing aids and done over a hundred audiograms. Sadly we are almost out of "profound" hearing aids! This means when the doctors see a profoundly deaf person they will have to tell them we can't help them this year. We may be out of all the hearing aids before the end of the two weeks. I am also learning how to make a custom hearing aid mold.

The people are so grateful that they hug all the workers in the clinic. Two of the patients I worked with today gave us gifts. The first an older woman and her daughter gave everyone little pouches in wonderful fabrics. The second a man, whom I fit for his first hearing aid, and his wife returned to the clinic with dolls for us all. It made me cry! These people wait all day in crowded hallways and are shuffled from station to station and are still so grateful.

Our patients come to us in waves. A nurse comes with a big stack of files followed by about 40 people (15 patients plus their families). This happens several times over the course of the day!

We worked from 8 am til 4:30 today with about a fifteen minute lunch. We don't take breaks! We are busy ALL the time in a hot clinic. Today we had a number of difficult fittings that took a long time. It is very tiring work but I am loving it!!! I really hope to come back next year.

On our way home today we noticed an interesting doorway so we walked in bought a 20 quetzales ticket and walked around the ruins of Santa Clara (monastery and church). There is a treasure on every block of this town!

People are referring to this as voluntourism instead of volunteerism for good reason! Antigua, Guatemala has blown me away! It is a nothing short of awe inspiring! I love the work and I love what we get to see after work.

A group of ten of us are going to climb the pacaya volcano on Saturday! Pray it doesn't errupt....I understand it has already done that in the last six months so hopefully it has met its quota!

Good night

Teenaged translators

Our teenaged translators, Sophia and Peter, with Lisa and Ann and a patient.

Presents

Another busy day in the clinic, barely time for lunch. Batteries arrived today. We have more than a thousand to give out with our hearing aids. Two different clients returned to the clinic with gifts for each of us. Two high school students helped with translation today, Sophie and Peter are pictured with Lisa. On the way home we stopped at the ruins of Santa Clara convent. I have included a picture of Lisa in the cloisters. (Notice the doll she is carrying and the pouch around her neck. These are the gifts she received today.) The last photo is of a tuktuk, the local taxi in front of our hotel. We are climbing Pacaya Volcano on Saturday with 10 others from our team.

Tuesday

We were short-staffed today. Debbie has gastro and her husband has an I.v.running in her hotel room to rehydrate her. Hopefully no-one else gets sick!
Answers to Churchill209 questions:
Kayleigh, no sunburns yet. We have been in our little clinic all day. Somebody came back today after their hearing aid almost dropped in the toilet. We cut the tube shorter, so it fit tighter over her ear. We write a list on sticky notes and remove them when we have seen people, so everyone can see when they turn is coming up. They usually bring a family member to help them, sometimes a grandchild to be their ears. We have met some wonderful, helpful children.
Laryssa, Molly, Liam I think we will keep our name for now. We don't know how to change it with our iPads and don't have time to talk about a new name, although I really like the McDonald's lovers name. Anyone would like this McDonald's.
Melodee, people take out the hearing aid at night and in the shower and turn them off to save battery power. There are no batteries in any of the stores here. We are waiting for a FedEx shipment. It is good for their ears to have some fresh air. Ear wax would build up in the ear canal if they didn't take off their hearing aid sometimes.
Finn, we saw about 25 people today. They all had audiograms and about 15 of them have new hearing aids and new lives. They are very happy and we get a lot of blessings and hugs. Wehave mostly adults and a few kids. We had a 2-year old girl today and she was putting in her own hearing aid. I have attached a picture of her.
Hunter, there really is a McDonald's In Guatemala, but it is really hard to find. There are no signs allowed in this city. It is a works heritage site.
Thomas, we have quick lunch breaks and eat frijoles, leftover breakfast and some mystery food. Not great, but we have nice dinners at restaurants at night. We haven't climbed any mountains yet, but may climb an active on our day off, on Saturday. We will buy ingredients for s'mores to cook in the lava.
The picture of Lisa and me with the man was taken because I gave him one hearing aid last year and Lisa gave him a hearing aid for the other ear this year. He was carrying a picture of me doing the fitting from last year. We asked him which fitting was better and he diplomatically said that they were equally good.
Good night to my friends at Churchill.

Day 3

We had a busy day! We worked from 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. in the clinic. We had a lot of profoundly deaf patients and sometimes the hearing aids cannot help them, but we also had many people who left our clinic able to hear!
Thanks for all the questions Churchill, room 209!
Some answers:
Hunter, I only know a few Spanish words, but I am trying. I have made some silly mistakes, like saying "you don't speak Spanish," when I wanted to say "I don't speak Spanish. We have interpreters and sometimes even need an interpreter to translate from a Mayan language into Spanish and then another to translate from Spanish into English. Today we had 3 high school students as volunteer interpreters. I wish I had learned Spanish when I was your age.
Kayleigh, sometimes we really have a hard time fitting hearing aids. The ones we have were made for someone else's ears, so we often have to try many of them before one fits. We know that it fits when it is comfortable and the hearing aid doesn't make a horrible squealing with feedback. Today, I could not find a hearing aid to fit a 12-year-old boy so I had to make one by squirting a compound, kind of like play dough, into his ear. When it hardened, I pulled it out, drilled a hole in it, put a tube in it and attached the hearing aid to it.
Hi Millie, I drove from Ottawa to New Jersey for the flight. The drive was about 7 hours; Lisa and i flew from there to Houston,Texas (about 4 hours), then to Guatemala City (about 3 hours). We took a bus to Antigua, another hour. Antigua is surrounded by volcanoes. One of them is named Fuego and is puffing right now. I can see it from our hotel.
Hi Thomas, there are about 45 people from Canada on our medical-surgical team. I think we have people from every province here. Most of us are here for 2 weeks, although there are some who leave after a week, with someone else replacing them next week. I am happy to be here for the full 2 weeks.
Hi Ethan, "diamonds in the rough" was a temporary name, until we thought of something better. Shauna was showing me how to make a blog and she made me pick a name. Do you have any ideas for a better name?

Monday, January 28

Laurie and I are both exhausted from a long day, eleven hours, at the hospital! We started around 7 am with a lovely breakfast ( hot dogs and black beans) in the OR area. I barely recognized the doctors and nurses with their scrubs and hats on ready for surgery. JP, one of the ENT's, and Rod where dressed in "care bears" scrubs (quite a departure from the standard blues or greens seen in most operating rooms).

We quickly became very busy in the audiology clinic early this morning and got backed up with all the audiograms we needed to perform. We are getting better at performing the tests faster when you have the pressure of sixty people waiting, Hearing tests can take less than ten minutes or more than 30 if you need to do bone conduction tests. Early morning we had many little children which can be very difficult to test. It was sad and shocking to see how hard of hearing so many young people are.

In the afternoon the hearing aid side of the clinic became very busy. Many of those we had given audiograms to were returning after seeing the doctor to be fit for a hearing aid. I really had some learning to do! We use donated molds and try to match the patients ear to a mold. It is a tricky trial and error procedure. After trying countless molds on this lovely young teenage boy to no avail we had to make him one. Laurie showed me while she made it. Sort of a silly putty experience complete with drills and tubing. Pretty impressive actually. We then attach a hearing aid to the mold. Seems last year they had a wonderful donation of new hearing aids to distribute. This year we just have old, but working, hearing aids. A total of 124. It is a little more difficult having to figure out the mechanics of each of the hearing aids. We are anxiously awaiting a delivery of donated batteries as we are in very short supply of the most commonly used one. Laurie purchased all the hearing aid batteries in Antigua! I hope the batteries arrive soon. Fitting hearing aids without batteries would be impossible.

I got a lot of hugs today from very grateful people who now have improved hearing! And hugs from mothers whose children we had helped. As a mother myself this was very emotional, as I imagined how they must be feeling. We also met this wonderful little boy, about ten, who spent the whole day with his grandmother as her interpreter. She was very hard of hearing but he knew how to communicate with her. He was so cute and tried to learn a little English from us! They had travelled 4 hours to come to the clinic and we learned he was without a mother and his father was being operated on later this week by one of our surgeons.

Thank heavens for Lavinia our interpreter who is Mexican, married a Canadian, and works in a hospital in northern BC with one of the anesthetists (Hazleton,BC?) Also I met three wonderful Guatemalan kids, all juniors (grade 11), Peter, Chantal and Sophia who came after school today to help as interpreters. They all spoke perfect english! I so wished Courtney could be here to met them and share in the experience. I think they will be back tomorrow and hopefully I can connect Courtney to them.

We finished our day by going to cafe mediterranean for pasta, then to Luna Miel, for dessert crepes and coffee. Lavinia joined us and we ran into another 6 of the group at dinner. Happily we are back at our casita and ready to sleep!

We had planned to go to a free salsa class at 5 today but didn't finish at the clinic til 6. Hopefully tomorrow we will have an after work activity that doesn't just involve eating.

Day 2 - Sunday, January 27

Sunday was NOT a day of rest for the "medicos en accion" team! We were all at the hospital before 7:30 where we were greeted by hallways full of waiting patient holding onto there medical charts and X-rays. We headed directly to the operating room area where we had breakfast (scrambled eggs which looked more brown than yellow, black beans and bread) and were given a talk by the head Guatemalan nurse Odra (most of which dealt with medical surgical procedures...she was very knowledgeable).

Then the Priest arrived, with an interpreter, to thank us and give us a tour of the hospital. Hospital Harmano Padro is associated with the catholic church. I was surprised that apart from the surgeries, performed by the volunteer doctors who descend on the hospital each week, the remainder of the hospital is, for the most part, a long term care facility, with severely handicapped patients. The first area we visited we were met by a young woman, a patient, who asked everyone their names. Once you said it she either said no gusto ( i don't like your name) or gusto, For both Laurie and I she was neutral. It was very amusing. The baby room, "the room of hope", is one I hope to have an opportunity to return to to hold/play/feed some of the babies!!! The babies are either abandoned or under nourished, and many seemed happy just to have a little attention! One little guy was wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. I am not sure if that was a coincidence or if the nurses dressed him knowing it was a team of Canadian doctors who had arrived.

The tour ended at the clinics where the doctors were greeted by hundreds of clapping patients. The patient have all travelled, many from great distances, to be seen by the doctors today in hope that they would be scheduled for surgery. The surgeons spent the entire day meeting the patients by the hundreds!

The Audiology team leader is none other than my dear sister, Laurie Pollock, who was nothing short of amazing leading us in setting up the audiology clinic where i will be working for the next two weeks. I learned how to use the audiometer and how to fit hearing aids. For us, today was mostly about getting set up, but we did see about 15 patients. As I understand it, tomorrow the hallways will be filled. When I say hallways, the hospital is all open air, so the hallways are actually outside.

We finished around 5 today but not before the first injury occurred! To ME! Laurie had warned us when leaving the "sound proof room" which is not sound proof at all, that it was easy to jam your finger! Well I jammed my thumb, took out a big chunk of skin and had to leave the testing behind to stop the bleeding. Lucky for me there are a few doctors around! On the way out to dinner we stopped by the hotel room of one of the doctors and she set me up with some steri strips. (first she asked to see my OHIP card, I told her I would need to pay cash as I am now from Jersey)

We then went to HECTORS for dinner. Trip advisors number one restaurant in Antigua. it was amazing! It is a hole in the wall place that sits only eight people. We went with Cindy and Murray (aka Dr. Mario)! Murray and Cindy have travelled a lot and have studied spanish. Early in the morning Murray was practicing his Spanish on one of his first patients by telling them to inhale and exhale while he was listening to them with a stethoscope! He was quickly corrected by one of the local interpreters who told him he actually had told the patient to inspire and then expire (as in DIE)!

Good night!

Day 2

We had a busy day, setting up the clinic, doing inventory, and getting everyone up to speed on audiograms and "hanging hearing aids".
We have a little problem with no hearing aid batteries. We bought all we could find in Antigua and the store, Casa de Gomez will try to get us more by Wednesday.
We ran our clinic until 5:00 and then headed to our favourite restaurant, Hector's. We got one of their 3 tables along with Dr. Mario and his wife, Cindy. Murray (aka Dr. Mario), who is one of the anaesthetists, was doing pre-ops today and using his Spanish, asking patients to "inspire y expire" while he listened to their chest. Turns out he was asking them to "inspire and die!"
We have a busy day tomorrow, so good night.

Day 1

Laurie and I flew from Newark to Houston. (thanks Michael for the free drink coupons...we actually have 4 mini wine bottles left over...sitting in our room ready for us to consume. They had Shiraz which is my favorite!). In Houston we joined up with 29 members of the "medicos en accion" team! Maybe 5 of us who aren't doctors or nurses. I might have to go to medical school so I can come back next year! I proudly wore my "team" shirt which claims I am part of a "surgical team". Luckily for the Guatemalans I don't plan on helping out on that front!

We arrived well past bedtime at "Quinta des Flores", our home for the next couple of weeks. We have been assigned to cassita 1 with Hillary and Lydia (the sister and daughter, of Rod the chief surgeon and team leader for the group). Our cassita is a lovely townhouse style complete with living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. ( a little Juliet balcony off our bedroom) We took a walk around the property in the dark and ran into Rod and J.P. ( aka PJ after I mistakenly recalled his name...he appears to have a good sense of humor about it). He is one of the ENT's we will be working for in the audiology clinic.

After breakfast at the outdoor restaurant at our hotel we meet with Rod , who was taking the group on a walking tour of Antigua. I would say a little less than half of the group are in guatemala for the first time. I believe the team total is 39. About 20 of us took the tour. First stop was a quick trip around the hospital so everyone would know where to go at 7 am tomorrow. It was a better facility than I had anticipated and appeared and smelled clean. We walked by the operating theatres were we all meet in the morning for breakfast and I assume just to get organized for the day. Tomorrow we will be setting up the audiology clinic and perhaps starting to see some patients. I understand tomorrow the surgeons will be meeting and evaluating patients and setting up a surgery schedule. Other years they have run 3 operating rooms but this year the team is big enough to run 4 operating rooms!

After our quick hospital tour we continued our orientation walk. It is a beautiful little town. A modern day Pompeii complete with the active volcano puffing away. (volcano is called fuego). We saw lots of beautiful textiles, pan flute players and even family of young boys playing turtle shells as drums. We meet many friendly vendors and now have plans to take salsa classes and Spanish lessons in the evenings. We went to a large bodega and picked up a few snacks. ( I will go back and take pictures for you Mike). Had a lovely lunch at cafe condesa outside by a fountain.

Resting up now for our first team Fiesta. One of the ENT's, Norm, from Ohio, is preparing a welcome dinner for everyone!

Everyone I have met is wonderful. I am trying to keep all the names and occupations straight. Very excited to start work tomorrow!

Saturday

Lisa says that she is coming back next year! We'll see if she feels the same after she has started her job! It was cold last night; we were too cold to get out of bed and get the duvet from the cupboard. We had a shivery night until 6:00 a.m. when we finally got covered up. It turned into a beautiful sunny day and we wandered around Antigua. Now we are about to have a siesta. Tomorrow we start at the clinic. I have posted some photos: one of the view from our bedroom, one of Lisa and Cindy in front of the hospital and one of Lisa at McDonald's (we used their bathroom). The volcano in the background is Volcan Agua.

Sparks MD 's to the rescue!

ready to go!

I am checking the weather to see if I have to leave tomorrow or hopefully, the day after. Our flight is from NJ and I must drive through ice and snow to get there.

We are happy

We found an ipad app for blogging

First time

Shauna is patiently tutoring me in blogging. I am new to the ipad, new to blogging