Happy Easter!

Today was filled with pool time and relaxing much like the past few days. As much as I miss home already it was especially hard knowing I was missing Easter with my family. I guess I should just consider myself fortunate that I have a family that enjoys the company of each other and is worth missing.  I hope you all got to enjoy great church services and some quality time with your families. 

Tomorrow is the last day of Holy Week and we are heading to some of the Mayan ruins in the morning. Of all the things there are to see in this country I think the ruins are what I want to see the most so I am really looking forward to it. I will be sure to take plenty of pictures to post. Hopefully we will get back pretty quick tomorrow afternoon so we can all start packing since we are going out to rural villages on Wednesday and Thursday and Tenke and I definitely may be crunched for time since our plane leaves at 6:45 AM on Friday morning. 

I hope we can do some good for a few folks in this last week and continue to stay safe, but I am very much looking forward to heading back to the States on Friday morning.  I hope everyone is well and I look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Less Than a Week Left

It is hard to believe how fast time has passed, Monday will be 3 weeks in El Sal.  Holy Week is definitely in full force and San Sal is much quieter than it has been in previous days.  It is kind of neat to see such a big city by Central American standards come to a screeching halt for a religious holiday.  That isn't to say that people aren't using this time to enjoy the beaches and lakes but most all of the event here are in some way focused on Easter and its meaning.

The past few days have been filled with relaxing and sight seeing.  On Thursday we went to El Tunco for the day.  It is an amazing beach and is one of the surfing capitals of Central America.  It was absolutely packed with Salvadorians on vacation and Americans surfing but we had a great time.  Aside from the surfing it is famous for a large rock in the water not too far from the beach and in general the beach is as much rock as it is sand.  We had a great time and have some great stories, photos and even a few scars from the day to show off when we get home.

The rest of the weekend will more than likely be spent at the apartment or at the places within our "safe zone" here in La Zona Rosa so our preceptors and drivers can enjoy the holiday with their families. It will be kind of different tomorrow not getting up for a sunrise service and not being home for church in general.  It will actually only be the second time in my life I haven't been in NC for Easter.  I hope everyone is able to have a wonderful day, can spend some much needed time with family and will truly appreciate what this Holiday is all about!

El Tunco Rock. Just for a size reference on the right side of the rock there is a surfer.

Holy Week Begins!

I apologize for not posting the past few days.  I will be honest I forgot a couple of nights and just plain fell asleep as soon as we got home and ate dinner on Monday.  Things have been going well over the past few days. The pace certainly has not picked up since Semana Santa (Holy Week) is in full swing.  This country is basically at a stand still now and apparently will stay that way until Monday morning.

Monday we went back to Chalatenango and had clinic there.  On the way back to San Sal we stopped by an awesome little town called Suchitoto.  It was absolutely beautiful. All the streets were cobblestone, there was a traditional town square with a 200+ year old Catholic Church on one side and the entire town overlooked Lake Suchitlan. Everyone was starting to arrive for the traditional Holy Week celebration they have there so there were a ton of street vendors and fun things to do.

Yesterday we went back to the orphanage we went to on the first day in Sonsonate.  We had a blast seeing several of the kids and a few of the nuns there and got to check up on the 2 year old that had been dropped into the storm drain by his mother I mentioned in an earlier post.  He is actually doing much better, still quite listless, which I have a feeling will be the norm for him, but his lungs sounded clear and he has definitely grown in 2 weeks.

I truly mean this sincerely, but it is horrible that this trip has turned into so much of a vacation.  It is all out of our control as students as far as the timing of the trip and where VCOM will allow us to go but I definitely feel like we have been underutilized.  I guess I need to change my mindset and be thankful for the good we have done for the people we have gotten to see and not focus on the wealth of missed opportunities I feel like we have had.  We aren't sure what our plans will be for the rest of the week except we know there will be no clinic because of Holy Week. There are definitely several things we want to do but we want to be sure to respect the vacation time and religious desires of our driver and preceptors.

I hope everyone is doing well.  I can't deny that I am having a great time but I am very much looking forward to getting back to North Carolina.

 View of San Sal from Volcano on Sunday.  The haziness in the picture is actually the smog over the city.

We were able to pick out our apartment building from the Volcano.  There are three dark brick buildings in the bottom right corner.  Our apartment is the beige building at the 11 o'clock position of those buildings (the leftmost of the three buildings almost touches ours in the photo).

Panoramic view from the side of the volcano that faces away from the city on Sunday.

Our Group in Chalatenango on Monday. From L to R The local health promoter, Ryan, Tenke, Me and our driver Don Hernan. The little boy in the center is one of the patients we saw.

View on the drive up to Chalatenango.  It would be even more amazing to see this after the rainy season starts in a month or so and everything gets green. 

Catholic Church on the town square in Suchitoto.

Halfway Home!

Today is officially the halfway point of the trip and it has honestly been pretty amazing so far. Definitely not what I was expecting or hoping for when I signed up for the trip but an amazing experience none the less.

We have been able to use today to catch up with things around the apartment. The washing machine finally got fixed yesterday morning so we have all been washing clothes as hard as we could go today.  Still not sure about plans for tomorrow, there is a possibility of going to one of several volcanoes close to San Sal but that will dependent upon us finishing going through two huge duffle bags of medicines that need to be sorted for clinic.  It is a cumbersome process but we found some things in there we really needed like antihistamines, cough syrup and children's vitamins all of which we had been out of for quite some time.

This week should be interesting as Semana Santa (Holy Week) officially begins on Monday.  We have been told that this country shuts down more for easter than they do for Christmas.  We are going back to Chalatenango on Monday to do rural clinic and follow up with some of the patients we saw on Thursday then going to an orphanage about and hour from San Sal on Tuesday but our work week is basically done after that.  It will be nice to take in a good bit of the culture here but I would definitely rather be working.  With the Holiday week that unfortunately isn't going to be possible.  We are scheduled to see some cool things though.  On Good Friday we are heading to a small village that does a huge Easter procession and parade complete with the body of Christ being carried in a see through casket through the streets.  Definitely going to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to see that.  I think we are also going to get to head back to the beach for a few days which will definitely be nice.

Hope everyone is well at home, I am definitely looking forward to seeing everyone when I get back.  It is crazy being here tonight, Christina and I are actually supposed to be at a meet and greet for all of the new interns and residents at Cabarrus.  Wish I was there to meet everyone but I am sure I will get to know them all really well very soon.

Chalatenango I am Pretty Sure it is El Salvadorian for Spruce Pine

Today was a lot of fun.  Our two hour drive to clinic in Chalatenango was more like two and a half to three, but it was definitely a beautiful drive.  We were basically as high in altitude as you can possibly go in this country and there were some stunning views along the way.  Chalatenango is a small farming village.  It really did remind me of the mountains of Western North Carolina and I will apologize in advance because I left my camera in our car and won't be able to post any pictures tonight.  Other than clinic, I think the best part of the day was just being in the mountains away from the city.  It was nice to breathe some crisp, clean mountain air and see how much different life is away from San Sal.  They grow a variety of crops in Chalatenango ranging from wheat to fruits to flowers for florists but their main cash crop is cabbage much of which is exported to the States.  It seemed to be everywhere and entire hillsides would be that distinctive blue green because of the cabbage leaves.  We got a chance to stop at one of the local farms which runs a produce/flower market and buy a few things.  I really wish the flowers would survive the trip back to the states because for $1 you could get an amazing bouquet that easily would cost $30-40 back home (I was thinking about you Christina, I hope it's the thought that counts).  They also made their own homemade jams that they sell and export to the states so I picked up a couple of jars to bring home.  If they taste half as good as they look it is going to be amazing. 

Clinic today was slower than I expected but I really feel like we did some good.  Each community here has a health officer, basically a nurse, who helps with vaccinations and communicates needs with government officials.  The health officer in this community let only those that were most in need and couldn't afford to purchase their own medications know we were coming and that was the main reason for such low numbers.  I feel like everyone that did show up really needed our help.  We ran clinic out of a VERY small bedroom in someones house so that also limited the number of folks we could see.  I feel like we saw some things outside our normal respiratory/cold complaints and that was definitely a welcome change.

Tomorrow we are off in the morning to grocery shop and run errands.  Our washing machine should finally get fixed in the morning which will without question be nice. In the afternoon we have a short clinic at the school in Santiago.  We got some more medications today so hopefully we will be able to get those to the folks we weren't able to give them to earlier in the week and we can get them on the mend. 

I hope everyone is well at home, you all have no idea how much I miss you! I truly wish we were busier so I didn't have so much time to think about it.  Don't get me wrong I am definitely enjoying my time here but I came here to work not to be a tourist.  I am looking forward to seeing everyone when I get back Stateside two weeks from tomorrow!

And then there were three...

Today was another good day. We had a much shorter clinic day today so we could be here for the maintenance  guys to fix our washer. The short clinic went well and I got to do the knee injection this morning. It went well but I really am mot sure how mich relief the guy is going to get. In the states he would definitely be an operative candidate to resolve his pain but that just isn't an option here for both technological and monetary reasons. Min, the only female in our group traveled back to the States today for family reasons but will be back in a week. I think ultimately it will be a good thing, she was handling the majority of the women's health issues, so now that will be a bit more evenly distributed.

I got an email from Cabarrus today with the application for my North Carolina training license. As excitig as things like this are it is equally as terrifying. As July rapidly approaches the more real everything gets. It is a really odd feeling to think that in a few months I am going to be making real suggestions and recommendations for patients. I know how hard I have worked and how much I have learned but the thing I am most aware of is how little I know in the grand scheme of things. I know it will come with hard work and time and that it is going to truly be a lifelong effort but it is a scary thing to think about the responsibility I am going to have! That's not to say I don't have confidence in myself but it definitely serves as a great means of motivation to learn as much as I can in every situation.

Tomorrow is going to be amazing. I think we are going to work our tails off, which is what I was hoping for when I decided to come on this trip. We are traveling a couple of hours north to Chalatenango to do a rural medicine clinic. I hope it will be a fruitful day because we are really running short on medicines and resources. There has been a huge miscommunication between VCOM and the providers here and we either haven't had or have had very limited quantities of many of the medications we need. I am worried we are going to have literally hundreds of patients tomorrow and very little to treat them with. Hopefully we can be resourceful and do the best we can with limited resources. I will be sure to take some pictures and post them tomorrow.

Missing home more and more each day! Christina has a ridiculous amount on her plate right now between work, the animals and preparing for a more permanent living situation for us in the next few months. I really feel guilty I am not there to help her out but am very thankful to be married to an amazing woman who is also my best friend and for the support and help she has to ease her burden.

Day 8 and I Didn't Break the Washing Machine!

So first things first. I forgot to post this yesterday but it turns out it wasn't my fault the washer flooded the apartment! Pretty excited about that. The pump for the machine is actually broken which caused the problem. Tomorrow we should get done with clinic early so when we get back the maintenance guys will be able to come up and fix the problem.

On a more serious note today was by far the best day of clinic we have had. The morning started off really slow at the special needs orphanage but got kicked into high gear when we traveled to the orphanage for HIV + kids later. The children there had not received general medical care in quite some time so we were able to see all of them for check ups or whatever complaints they had. They were so full of life and so much fun to be around. It was very humbling to see how normal they were even though they are infected with such a horrible and unforgiving virus. All of the children there had been born with the disease and were abandoned by their parents for one reason or another. I think they truly appreciated having some guys to play with as most of the orphanage staff are females. We really got to take our time wih each child and spend a good bit of time playing with all of them. One of my favorite parts of the day is when Melvin, a 4 year old, just started grabbing books off a shelf and came and sat with me and had me read to him for 20 minutes or so. I am sure that one on one attention is something he rarely if ever gets and was something that I got on a daily basis when I was his age. I am sure that I took it for granted but looking back I hope my parents, grandparents and extended family know how much I appreciate every moment they spent with me. Before we left we gave the Tia (orphanage director) two of the soccer balls Tenke and I brought. The kids were beyond excited and hopefully they can use them for months and yeas to come.

In the afternoon we went to a video conference at the medical school here in San Sal. We got to take a tour of the anatomy lab before hand. It was pretty cool to see how much different it was from the truly state of the art facilities we have at VCOM. It was still very clean and surprisingly didn't smell that strongly of formaldehyde considering in was largely open and 90+ degrees today. The video conference was ok, we had no clue what was going on but did learn some interesting facts about med school here in El Sal. It takes 8 years to complete and you begin right after high school like several other Latin American countries. They do 4 years of didactic/classroom work, 3 years of clinicals and then work in rural government run clinics for 1 year before graduating. They also pay their tuition on a monthly basis rather than yearly. Their tuition it roughly $300 per month which is very expensive given the poverty here.

I hope everyone is well back home, and I am very much looking forward to being back there in just over two weeks!

Day 7 and Back at Work!

After an awesome weekend and getting to see some beautiful places it was nice to get back to work today. We went back to the main orphanage/school in Santiago for the day. We worked with Dr. Pena this morning  and Dr. Romero in the afternoon. Dr. Pena is a really smart guy and is very well trained. It was nice to be more of a student with him today and get to learn some very useful and resourceful tricks that I will be able to use back in the states. It is truly amazing to see his attention to detail in his physical exams and the things he keys in on to help him make complex diagnoses with very few tools and tests. Aside from precepting for us he also teaches public health at the medical school here so he is very in tune with educating the patients as well as what needs to be done if we do find an outbreak of parasites or another disease. We actually saw a guy today who clinically has a torn meniscus and his pain isn't being controlled by oral meds. Surgery isn't a real option here until the pain is unbearable so a steroid injection could be super beneficial as far as alleviating his pain. We didn't have the meds or needles with us today but we are getting them for when we go back on Wednesday and I get to do the injection because Dr. Pena will not be there and I have done several more than the other students here. Really looking forward to doing my first procedure of the trip and hopefully giving this guy some relief. He is the PE teacher at the school we are working at and his pain has really impaired his work over the past 3 months. We also may have seen our first case on dengue fever today. I felt so sorry for the little girl, she was in horrible pain and the fevers she had over the past five days were really high. Hopefully we will get her tests back by Wednesday and will be able to give her family some answers and her some relief.

Tomorrow should be another good day. We are heading to two different orphanages. In the morning we are going to an orphanage for children born with HIV.  It should be a very humbling opportunity and really push me outside my comfort zone a bit. Hopefully we can go and show them some much needed love and attention. In the afternoon we are headed to an orphanage for special needs children. We were told to expect several children with Downs stndrome and some with Arnold-Chiari malformation. I really think I will be exposed to a ton of new things tomorrow and it will be a great learning experience.

I hope all is well in the States! Seven days down and 19 to go! I'm having a blast but I miss my beautiful wife and family too much to not have a countdown!

Playa Xanadu

Today we visited Plaz, a friend of Dr. Romero's sister at his beach home about an hours drive from San Sal.  On the way we got to stop for agua de coco (coconut water), which in true El Salvadorian style came in a small plastic bag with the coconut meat in the bottom with a straw in the bag so we could drink it.  I'm super glad I tried it and it is definitely better than the canned/bottled version we have in the States but I honestly am not itching to try it again any time soon. Being on the beach in the northern part of the country was a completely different experience than yesterday.  The beaches were beyond beautiful and the size and strength of the waves literally cannot be put into words.  The coastline in this part of El Salvador consist mostly of cliffs and rocks with small beaches carved out by the waves.  Plaz's community has a private beach which was especially nice and we got to enjoy several hours in the sun.  He also had a small charcoal grill at his house and I got to cook dinner for everyone there.  Anyone who knows me well, knows how much I like to cook and it was awesome to get to grill out in another country.

The drive back was quite an adventure.  Tons of traffic and the engine of the car we were in overheated several times causing us to have to pull off the side of the road.  We were fortunate enough to pull into a roadside restaurant on one such occasion and Dr. Romero treated us to Salvadorian quesadillas which are nothing like the mexican quesadillas we are used to.  I know it sounds ridiculous but imagine a cross between cheesecake and cornbread. It was amazing and I will definitely be having it again before I leave the country.

I would have put this post up a few hours earlier but I seem to have just caused a catastrophe in the apartment.  Anyone who knows me even the slightest bit can attest to the fact that if there has ever been  a big ole white goof its me.  I have been known to trip over lines painted on football fields and wrestling mats, fall and almost drown in mud puddles and honestly very often just have plain old bad luck (you all should be very thankful I am not going to be a surgeon), and it seems as though this has definitely followed me to El Salvador.  I let everyone else in the apartment do laundry earlier in the weekend because I had enough clothes to last until tonight so when we got home I decided I would go ahead and wash some clothes.  Attempting to complete my least favorite household chore, which I hate with a passion and definitely am not very good at (my wife can tell you it has took me over a year and a half to finally do a load of clothes correctly) seemed to be my ultimate downfall tonight.  I washed the first load without problem, took them out of the washer and placed them in the dryer and started my second load.  I came back to the bedroom Tenke and I share and began working on this post.  I had just finished the second paragraph and Ryan came in our room and said the laundry room and kitchen were flooding.  He wasn't kidding.  The entire laundry room was already full of water and it was starting to work its way out into the kitchen.  Thank God he caught it in time, I feel certain if he hadn't our furniture would have been floating very shortly.  I immediately stopped the washer, turned off the water, yelled frantically for towels because of course we have no mop in this apartment and we began sopping up the water.  We were using every dry towel, dish rag, blanket and sheet we could find.  We decided it would be best if we went to our neighbor who is the owner of the apartment to see if she knew what was going on.  She rushed, over yelled "Ay Dios Mio" (oh my God in Spanish)  and went to call our friendly maintenance man Eduardo.  She offered to come back and translate if we needed her too but me feeling ultimately responsible I decided there was no need and I could handle it.  Eduardo came up quickly disgustedly looked at the four of us working as hard as we could to sop up the water with all the towels sheets and blankets and announced in Spanish that someone, that would be me, had put too many clothes in the washer which had caused it to overflow.  I can only imagine how red my face was, so he immediately knew it was me and jokingly, or at least I think and hope it was jokingly, began to mutter some words I didn't understand so I can only imagine it was the first time I had ever been cussed out in Spanish!  We spent the better part of the next hour cleaning up my disaster.  I have had a good bit of time to think about what just happened, I can't help laughing about it but I also think it might somehow be better to just wear dirty clothes for the rest of the trip! I hope this at least makes you chuckle on Monday morning and remember, no matter how bad your Monday is you didn't flood your apartment in El Salvador on Sunday night!

Playa Xanadu (which means Paradise in Mayan), it is hard to appreciate in pictures but the sand is black.

Amazing view of the beach from the water

My view while grilling

El Salvadorian Sunset

Celebrating Match Day a La Playa

Today was  a great time.  Dr. Romero took us to the small private beach club where her family has a membership at the Costa del Sol.  We were told it is the most beautiful beach in the country and was definitely very popular.  It was pretty amazing to see how large the beaches are and experience how massive the waves are in the Pacific Ocean.  Definitely a cool experience to get to see and swim in the Pacific for the first time and the beauty of the beach definitely lived up to the hype.  It seemed very untouched largely because there was literally one hundred yards or more of sand between the resorts and the ocean.  The sun here is incredibly strong and even with 50 SPF sunscreen on I tried to limit the direct sun exposure to my horribly pasty white skin to a minimum.

The drive to the Costa del Sol was about an hour or so from our apartment in San Sal.  We were able to stop in Ocolito on the way which is the pupusa capital of the entire country.  The town is basically a church and dozens of stands which make and sell pupusas.  They are absolutely amazing and are similar in some ways to a quesadilla.  You get  a choice of either rice or corn dough which is stuffed with either refried beans, cheese or both flattened out and grilled on both sides.  It was definitely neat to be able to watch our food be made and see some of the locals who flocked to us when they saw an SUV full of "gringos" pull up.  There were several children there who were selling cashews, which are native to El Salvador, and small souvenirs.  Dr. Romero explained that because of the poverty here these children would probably never have the opportunity to receive an education and had been working since a very young age in hopes of earning a few dollars at best per day that they could contribute to their family. It was definitely a humbling site and made me feel very blessed to have been born not only in the States but into such an amazing family who did and still do everything in their power to allow me to reach my goals (miss you Mom and Dad).

We passed several resorts along the coast but extreme poverty is still the norm.  We were told that gang violence is also very common at the public beaches and just driving by those areas you could tell it probably would not have been a great area for us to stop.  Even with all the poverty this country is absolutely gorgeous.  I wish I had pictures that did it justice.  I have never been to a place where you could stand on an amazing beach then turn around and be staring at a massive active volcano or be driving down the coastline and in the opposite lane people are herding cattle.  It was a great experience to see it all.

We have been invited by one of Dr. Romero's friends to his beach house tomorrow.  We were told they will be preparing a traditional El Salvadorian meal for us and we are very much looking forward to experiencing more of their culture.  Hopefully we will return to our apartment in San Sal early enough to finish up all our laundry and get rested up for what hopefully will be a much busier week in the clinic.

Pupuseria in Ocolito

Cabana at Costa Del Sol

Amazing El Salvadorian Coast Line

MATCH DAY!

Today is the day that I have looked forward to for 4 long years! It is honestly one of the most important days in my life this far other than the day I became a Christian and the day I married my beautiful wife. I am so happy to say I could have never imagined that it would turn out this amazing! I am so happy not only for myself but for my wife and all of our extended family that we will have the opportunity to continue training in North Carolina at my #1 choice Cabarrus Family Medicine. It is such an amazing program and I am 100% confident that I will learn all the skills I need to be the physician I want to be. I am so excited to work with a great group of residents and what I am sure will be a great intern class. Ryan (the guy holding the baby in my earlier post) was the only other person on the trip who had not yet matched and he got some great news today also. He got his number one choice which was internal medicine in Virginia Beach. He is the first VCOM student to ever match there. So that's definitely a big deal.

I apologize for not posting yesterday, I didn't feel well at all yesterday and fell asleep pretty quickly after getting home from clinic. I was nothing serious and a few Tylenol and some Benadryl definitely fixed the problem. None the less it was nice to get some rest. It has been awhile since I have been in a primary are clinic much less doing a great deal of peds like we are here so I am sure I picked up a little virus. We had a really awesome experience on Wednesday night and Ryan, Tenke and I got to go to a concert here in San Sal. We saw David Guetta who is a famous DJ along with a few thousand screaming El Salvadorians. It definitely is not music that I am in to but was an amazing experience and I am glad I got outside my comfort zone and went. Wish I had some pics to post but none of us took cameras or phones in case the worst happened. It was actually extremely safe with security and police everywhere and turned out to be a great time.

Today was a great day filled with anticipation and excitement about the match. This morning we ran several errands and went grocery shopping for the week. We were able to get fresh fruits and vegetables that were safe for us to eat which is honesty the thing I have missed most since arriving in El Salvador other than Christina. We had a short clinic this afternoon at the orphanage clinic in Santiago, which seems to be our base camp so to speak this far. After seeing a few patients we came back to the apartment and got cook a meal for ourselves which was amazing.

Tomorrow we are going to the beach wih Dr. Romero. She keeps telling us how beautiful the beaches are and that the best pupusa stand (a traditional El Salvadorian food) in the entire country is on the way! It should be an awesome day an I will be sure to take a few pics to post tomorrow!

Day 2

I want to apologize for such a short post today. I am having some Internet trouble. I will do my best to work it out tonight. We had a great day of clinic at another orphanage/school today. Tomorrow we are doing a rural clinic and I think it will be a very busy day but an amazing experience. I know I am looking forward to being able to see more patients, things have been slower than I expected. We are well and I will update more extensively tomorrow.

Getting Settled In...

This morning we were originally told to be ready by 6:30 to head to an orphanage outside the city quite a distance to see some of the children there with Dr. Romero, the new Pediatrician, who actually just began working with Dr. Pena (our preceptor) yesterday.  I woke up at 5:00 am our time, 7:00 am your time, ready to jump in the shower and get to work.  I was able to grab a shower and enjoy our amazing apartment by eating breakfast on our balcony as the sun came up over San Salvador.  Minus the smog, which is a major problem here and causes some major lung diseases,  it was an amazing site.  We were quickly given our first taste of the laid back time schedule of Latin America when our driver didn't arrive at our building until almost 8:00 am our time.  It was really nice to get to know the other two students who are down here with Tenke and I during that time though.  We were acquainted with them from our time in Blacksburg, but definitely did not know them well so it was nice to have some time to goof off.  The countryside here is gorgeous and we got to see everything from sugarcane fields to shanty towns to a few volcanos which are actually still very  much active and have actually erupted in the past 30 years.  The orphanage was a great experience. Very humbling. We only saw around 12 patients this morning because Dr. Romero and I were the only people there who were bilingual and my spanish is definitely very rusty.  The children we saw today ranged from 2 months to 16 and all were abandoned by their parents and somehow managed to end up at this facility.  Most of them had experienced some sort of abuse by their parents during their early years which is a problem that runs rampant here.  The 2 month old we saw was an especially sad story.  He was actually dropped about 15 feet into a storm drain by his mother and left for dead at only a few weeks old.  He was found buried in the mud by police and was in cardiac arrest by the time he was gotten out.  The cardiac arrest caused blood to not be pumped to his brain leaving him with a great deal of brain damage and corneal ulcers that have left him blind.  He also has been treated with such strong antibiotics because of respiratory issues and has a fungal infection (thrush) of his mouth and throat that has made it difficult for him to swallow and he hasn't been gaining weight.  We basically saw him for  a well child check, and all things considered he is doing well.  It is truly a miracle that he is even alive and was a wonderful experience for me to get to examine this sweet, amazing baby and to get to show him some love once I was done.  

Once we finished at the orphanage Dr. Romero and Don Hernan, our driver, brought us back to the city to grab some groceries at El Salvador's version of Sam's Club or Costco.  We have had the afternoon free to truly get settled in and hopefully get ready to start seeing more patient's in the coming days.  We were pretty inefficient today so we are trying to work out a system amongst ourselves to streamline the process as we are responsible for getting vital signs, examining patients and dispensing the medicines that we have to treat the folks we see.  I am sure over the next few days we will get extremely good at this, we have a great group of very smart folks and everyone really want to do as much good as we can while we're here.

Just a few more details about our amazing apartment. We are situated in an area where several of the Embassies of other countries our located, making our street very safe.  There are armed guards who are on each block and apparently are stationed there not only to protect the homes in this neighborhood but also the pedestrians on the streets.  It is actually a really nice perk they are there because we have been given permission to explore this neighborhood during daylight hours.  We won't be pushing the envelope at all but we can at least walk to grab some dinner on nights like tonight when we just want to get out a bit.   

View from one of our balconies this morning.

Ryan holding the 2 month old boy that was abandoned in the storm drain.

Finally Here

I will be quick tonight because we have to be up early for clinic at an orphanage tomorrow.  We got to El Salvador around 8:20 PM tonight.  We were a little thrown off because it turns out we are actually 2 hours behind you all back home.  The apartment is amazing and I cannot wait to see the views of the city during the daytime. I will be sure to post some pictures and give you all a few more details tomorrow.  The big news for today is we arrived safely and I definitely will have a residency spot on July 1st, we just have to wait until Friday to find out where.  I promise I will do a better job of updating  everyone with more details in the coming days.

Pre-trip

I hope this blog circulates around to all my family and friends who want to keep up with me while I am in El Salvador and will be a good means of communicating with everyone while I am there as telephone calls will be really expensive.  I am going to be as diligent as possible about posting on here and hope to write a post and put some pictures on here each day as long as time and internet access permit! I will definitely keep everyone posted about the match process and where I end up for residency (fingers crossed I get my first choice). I hope everyone is well, now I need to get back to packing!

-J