Roatan - Day 2

As I sit down to write this post tonight, I am furiously scratching my face.  The mosquitos have already keenly discovered my juicy blood.  I have 3 bites on my jaw, one on my chin, one on my neck, one between my eyes (seriously?!), and one on my eyelid.  And that is my head alone.  I may survive Ed’s unkempt apartment (barely), but I don’t know if I’ll survive 6 weeks of mosquitos.  Don’t worry, I’m taking antimalarial medication.

                                                                 

Oh, and by the way I got an email from my pops today entitled “Urgent, Kristina--read this.”  He had me really worried for a bit.  Yes, there is a travel advisory to Honduras posted by the government and as the article in the email my dad sent pointed out, San Pedro Sula is apparently the most dangerous city in the world right now, followed by Acapulco, Mexico then Caracas, Venezuela.  Good thing I’ve already been to Acapulco.  No, but really, there is no need to be alarmed.  For the following reasons: I fortunately am not on the mainland, Roatan is a cruise ship stop, and our school wouldn’t send us here if they didn’t feel it was safe.  Hey, I’m a 6 foot Spanish speaker.  No one dares mess with me.  Don’t worry, I’ll be extra careful and not go anywhere alone.  I promise.

Well, after sleeping in off and on until 10 this morning, we finally got up and got ready for our first shift at the clinic, beginning at 12:30 pm (yes, I got cold during the night and yes, I used my beach towel as a blanket).  We didn’t really get assigned to do anything in particular until we’d been there for an hour or so, but finally got put into triage (there are a ton of other medical students here right now).  Wow, I can now appreciate all the work that goes into taking vital signs and flagging patients appropriately for who is next in line for care.  I absolutely loved using my Spanish today and had a smile on my face all afternoon, but man, I forgot how much work it takes to get a history from a Latino, excuse me, Hondureño.  I constantly had to redirect a few patients coming in with very vague complaints.  A lot of these people just need reassurance, no meds necessary. 

My Spanish is extremely rusty and I thought it was mostly my speaking skills that was having difficulty, but after thinking a patient was saying “adicción” instead of “inyección” and J (who speaks no Spanish) figuring it out, I soon realized that wasn’t the case.  At least we had a good laugh out of it. 

We put in a good full day’s work today – 6 hours.  Booyah.  After getting home and preparing a delicious salad for dinner, turns out Ed only has one fork in the entire place.  J ate dinner first followed by me.  Hey, if this is how it has to be done, then so be it.  We work the morning shifts for the rest of the week so hopefully we’ll get some beach time and exploring in, even some snorkeling perhaps.