Eventful Thursday!

This morning we took our final rotations in the ER, Polyclinic, Hospital and home visits.  I think Bobbie Jo and Bette had the most exciting experience with a laboring woman whose labor was not progressing.  When they left, the medical team had made the decision to send the patient by helicopter to the Dandriga Hospital for a C-Section. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the helicopter - and they didn't get to ride along! 

There was no power and no running water in the entire south half of the country this morning. It was apparently a planned outage for repair, but no one seemed to know anything about it until just before it went out.  The outage began at 8:30 am and lasted until 12:30 pm.  It was interesting to see hospitals and clinics survive without both power and water.  I wished that hand sanitizer was available in massive ammounts, as it is back home.  That would have been very helpful. 

After lunch, we went to another elementary school to do health teaching.  The kids totally loved our Health Jeopardy game - so much so that the teachers asked to keep the questions and the Jeopardy board! 

Finally, tonight we spent time with the traditional snake healer.  Mostly he talked about herbs and methods of healing, but at the end he brought out jars with dead snakes in them so that we could see some of the poisonous snakes from this area.  It was another eye-opening experience!

Tomorrow we will be spending the day in a village 90 minutes away.  This village is having a health fair at the local school, and we will staff the booth for Hillside, providing blood pressure, diabetes and obesity screenings/education.  We are told that most of the 90 minute drive is not over paved roads.  We have expereinced that a lot - but the Land Rover, driven by Andy, gets us wherever we need to go! 

Good night friends and family!