Wow, that went fast. Right? I feel like I was just writing to you all that I needed to make sure to find things to do to keep my January busy so that I didn´t get lonely. My month just filled naturally, though. I´ve been out of site for most of the last two weeks.
Last week, I took Juliana, a little girl from my site, to a club foot brigade in Tegucigalpa. She doesn´t have a club foot, but her toes have been falling off. So I used the brigade as a starting point, but then I just ended up toting her with me to the public and private hospitals in Teguc, looking for answers. Public hospitals in Tegucigalpa are ridiculous. They do not give appointments; one just shows up as early as one can in the morning with a reference and waits and waits...and waits until one can see the doctor. And the doctors are well trained, but they are trying to see as many patients as they can so it´s hard to get the sort of attention one needs. Everytime we would finally get to see a doctor, the doctor would inevitably call at least five other doctors, they would look at Juliana´s foot and talk about it. It´s a pretty mind-boggling thing. So, she was tested for leprosy, she was seen my dermatologists, foot doctors, and neurologists. In the public hospitals, we were passed from doctor to doctor. It was a pretty emotionally exhausting experience for me, because I was caring for this 13 year old on my own and being her only advocate. It was a tough week. Finally, we went to a private hospital and a doctor finally listened to us and took time with us. He decided that she probably has a neurological problem (she doesn´t have feeling in her foot, so she bumps it, it has poor circulation and her toes fall off) so we are going back in to Teguc on February 9th for an electrode nerve conduction test and an EMG brain scan. Hopefully that will work out.
We stayed with an RPCV who served in the Ukraine and his ethnically Russian wife. They were extremely kind to us and gave us all of our meals and toted us around Tegucigalpa for all of our appointments. We will stay with them again in a few weeks.
Over the weekend I went back to site, but this week I came into Siguatepeque for a PC in service training. I reunited with all of my fellow PAM volunteers. It was a fun week! We went to an integrated farm, learned about developing lesson plans for Environmental Ed, and did some networking with our fellow volunteers. I think it was important to step back and look at all the possibilities for projects (especially now that I´ve narrowed down the options in site--I don´t want to get closed minded...) Now I´ve only got nine days in site and I´m off again to Teguc with Juliana...my latrine project is moving fast (I´ve got an all community meeting and educational session on Feb 18th), and Katie Peterson is coming to visit on the 19th (and we´re going to Guatemala!). So February is going to FLY by. I hope you all are well. I love you. Thank you for the support--the letters, emails, and constant well-wishes.
Jennifer
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