Clinic Work

So here is my post about work in the clinic ... you know, one of the main reasons we came to Patchakan, Belize.

Patient volume has been low to moderate. Occasional busy days, but mostly a comfortable pace ... providing time to research cases and talk with patients, as well as some downtime to learn spanish. I would have liked things to be busier but many patients have had to find a more dependable source for their medical care as the clinic has been very sporadically open these past two years.

Patient care has been mostly hypertension and diabetes management. Occasional upper respiratory illnesses too. A couple of patients have needed stitches and one needed his elbow relocated (I was playing soccer with him at the time of his accident). We even raced to the local hospital with a patient I feared had a pneumothorax - fortunately for him, the needle with which I was going to decompress his lung stayed in my pocket. As well, I have performed a couple of procedures that I normally don't in the U.S. ... plantar fasciitis injections and skin tag removals.

I have seen 3-4 patients who most assuredly have cancer ... elderly with profound weight loss without a good reason. Limited resources make finding this cancer difficult. Limited resources would make treating these cancers impossible. These folks assuredly had something wrong with them, though they otherwise looked well.

We saw a few others who did not look well at all and their medical options were few ... patients with severe cardiomegaly, uremia and liver failure.

The future of the clinic is unclear. It will mostly be closed over the next 8 months. A doctor here, a dentist there. There are plans for a doctor to come in July, who will then stay for a couple of years. That should offer some stability and provide effective outreach. As I may have said before, the long-term goal is to have the clinic staffed only by nationals ... pray for that result.