Bugs, Drugs and Hugs

Before you start worrying that I've gotten into the wrong sort of habits, let me just tell you: this is what I've dubbed the first block of semester 3 of med school. The reason being that they are focused on learning tons of diseases (the bugs), as well as pharmacology (the drugs), and mixing in plenty of patient interaction experience (the hugs; because, you know, you gotta be good to the patients). Most students already call it "Bugs and drugs", but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to throw in more rhymes.

Interesting thing that Melissa found today: in addition to this being the birthday of Julius Richard Petri (the one who invented the eponymous dish), they were able to capture a molecule at the single atom level. The pictures look a lot like the diagrams in textbooks, apparently. You see, these are the kind of things Melissa finds when she's taking a study break. A STUDY BREAK AND SHE'S READING MORE SCIENCE. She crazy.

Also, in case you were wondering, she listens to a lot of classical music when studying, but today her ear was apparently craving the scores from the first four Harry Potter films (at least, she was only through four at 2 this afternoon; I'm willing to be she made it at least through Half-Blood Prince). So folks, the next time you're at the doctor's office, ask him/her what their go-to "study music" is. It should be an interesting answer.

Speaking of music, I'm in a band! You see, I had already been playing bass for about half the worship services with Ross Christian Fellowship, but a fellow spouse approached me a few weeks ago to join up with him and a couple students. These guys are pretty legit, especially compared to someone with relatively little "professional" bass experience. Luckily my natural inclination to play music from however many years of band I've had translated into a passable first practice last Saturday. And we even have some gigs this semester. In front of people, even! I'll keep you posted with how those go, and hopefully I can snag a pic or two from the events.

To close, I'll just tell you now: tomorrow officially ushers in hurricane season in the Caribbean. But based on the weather these last couple weeks, it feels like it's already here. We are getting a lot of rain (and even a bit of thunder/lightning!), and that has led to a couple days of reduced water or no water whatsoever. Don't worry: I try to keep the fridge stocked with reserves, so we're not going to dehydrate. Just be thankful for the water you have whenever you need it!

Take care you all!

-Eric

Whit Monday in Les Saintes (aka yet another Picto blog!)

Let me explain, because I'm sure some things in the title need clarifying. Firstly, "Whit Monday" is a Dominican holiday celebrating the workday following Pentecost Sunday. Since it's a national holiday, Ross gives the students the day off. So Melissa and her friends decided to hire a boat (a catamaran, to be precise) to take us to Les Saintes, or the smaller islands that make up Guadeloupe. And in case you missed the other ones, a picto blog is one where I just upload a bunch of pictures and put captions under them.  Enjoy!

Here we are at pier, bright and early. Our boat is the one right behind the rightmost wooden poles on the dock. Er, or the one to the right of that. No, it's the first one. A real live catamaran!

We're on the boat! And I have my sweet Raphael shirt on. I already knew at this point that it would be a good day.

Kaydee, Kara, and Sara with Captain Marc in the background. He's French! 

Luckily for us, Frances here is quite fluent in French, and she graciously translated for us throughout our voyage. Not sure what she's looking at here...

...Oh. Maybe this. This is Andrew. He took a lot of the pictures that I'm using for this blog today. Thanks, Andrew. 

This is Melanie, the First-mate on board. She was pretty chill; she's also French, but she travels all over the place. In fact, I think she was getting ready to go to Canada pretty soon! 

The inner cabin of the boat. Downstairs, they had a bathroom, but it was advised to not use while we were out on the water. The reason being that when we're on the waves, seasickness comes much more quickly when you can't see the water. Luckily we didn't have much trouble in general, but there was some Dramamine taken pre-emptively by some.

The boat that took us to the boat. A modest little vessel. 

The sail!

Remember that guy from earlier? Yeah, they let him drive the boat. Don't worry, he didn't hit anything (I think).

In Les Saintes. It has a very nice vibe to it. Very bright and clean, with lots of little souvenir shops and restaurants near the port. We walked up and down the main road a few times looking for a good bakery to get some French bread. Due to poor timing, we didn't get any. But we still ate well (see below)!

A church we saw. 'Twas nice. 

A statue of some sort. It was in this little garden in between two roads. 

Here's us walking back to the restaurant for lunch. We tried going right after getting off the boat, but they didn't open until noon. Hence the walking.

At lunch. The new face on the far left is Andre, the First mate on the other boat that traveled with us. As you can see, we were all having a great time throughout the day. Everyone was able to relax and enjoy the sights, sounds and tastes of Les Saintes.

The food was so good, we took pictures of it. This was Curry Chicken that Kara got. She liked it.

I think this was Kaydee's fish. She also liked it. The food was really spectacular, and plated with care and precision. For a bunch of students used to Subway and fare from "the Shacks", this was ambrosia.

Who doesn't like a cup of coffee after lunch? Me, apparently.

After lunch, we got back on the catamaran and moved over to a good snorkeling spot. Frances has an underwater camera, so we were able to get some fish shots!

Here's some nice orange coral. The fish were a little finicky about being on camera.

There were some nice conch shells lying on the bottom of the sea bed, but when I went down to try to get one, a little black fish came out from nowhere and poked me on the arm! He seemed angry, so I left the shells alone. It was weird, but pretty funny.

Candid! Just chilling in the water before heading back to Dominica.

On the way back, a few of us brave souls ventured as far as allowed up the bow of the boat to try and catch some waves as they broke underneath. It was more exciting than it looks. And yes, that is netting on either side of me, but no, I didn't test it too thoroughly.

See? Everyone is still smiling and enjoying themselves. When your group looks this good in the 12th hour of your trip, you've had a good trip.

And the sunset on the way back. Probably the best day trip possible. And of course, there's already talk about planning another one...

Well, I hope you liked the pictures. Thanks to Andrew, Kaydee, Kara and Frances for being good photographers and taking lots of pictures for me to choose from.

If you get the chance, take a boat somewhere! It's fun!


-Eric

Picto-post/blog #3: back to Guadeloupe and home with Rosco!

Betcha thought I was done. NOPE! We had a little more time back in Guadeloupe after the trip, and then there was a week or so back on Dominica before classes started up. So here goes.

Last blog ended with a dumb face by me, so why not start this one the same? Back in Guadeloupe, we went to the beach to relax and recuperate. Medical stuff is hard work. Trust me, I'm basically a pharm tech now.

It was nice to be at a sandy beach, since a lot of beaches (not all, mind you) in Dominica are kinda rocky. Although there did seem to be a trend of general cloudiness whenever we went to the beach. Maybe France imports their weather. 

While I was swimming, Melissa saw some gnarly iguanas chilling in the tree above her! Too cool!

Me swimming and not seeing the iguanas.

Here's me pointing at Dominica. Or maybe Les Saintes. The island directly above my head is Marie Galante, though. I know that for sure. 

Here's the front gate of the "hotel" we stayed at on the way back. It was more like a bed and breakfast, though. Pretty nice, except the owner hardly spoke English.

More of our hotel. Quite a nice little place.

Here is where the aforementioned breakfast happened. I dug the blue/white vibe it was dishing out.

After a couple days to relax, it was back to Dominica on the ferry! Here we are still in the port, I believe.

Our vessel. No wait, that's the ship behind us. Ours looked like this, except with more blue and less red.

More boats in the dock. Not sure what was going on in that boat there.

Stealth picture of Melissa. I like candid pictures of people, because it shows them in their "natural state", and not making a face or standing in a contrived position. Plus, it usually makes the pictures better anyway.

Once we were back in Picard, we picked up our little fella, Rosco! I think he grew a little...he needs to stop that.

We decided to try hiking one of the national trails during our week off before classes. It starts by crossing this pretty cool bridge over a river. 

The sign reassuring us that we are going the right way. The name Waitukubuli is the native name of the island, and Dominica is what the European settlers called it, because they landed on a Sunday. Very creative, those guys.

Awesome view from the trail of Portsmouth and Cabrits. At this point in the hike we were both a little tired, but still optimistic.

Around here, we were losing steam. And it only got tougher. A lot of the hills gave you very few footholds, so we both relied pretty heavily on trees to hang onto as we pulled ourselves up and then slowly slid down on the other side. This was basically how the whole hike went. My face says it all.

Oh, and there was mud halfway up my calf at one point. That was wonderful. Overall, it was an exciting hike in retrospect, but I did not enjoy it terribly in the moment.

Here's just a shot of Rosco sleeping. It's a good thing he didn't go hiking with us, because it would have been a trainwreck. But he still got tired regardless.

So that's our break, in three nutshells. Next week I'll get you up to date on Melissa and 3rd semester. Hope you're all doing well!

-Eric

Picto-Post Part Deux: Helping Heal in Haiti!

Wow, check out that alliteration. Certain days, I can't comprehend how crafty the computer in my cranium can be (boom, check it).  So anyway, today's chunk of blog will show y'all some snippets from our time in Haiti, helping Project Compassion and Friends & Family Community Connection, 2 groups working together on the medical mission trip we joined. Let's get to the pictures!

This is what we'd drive up to each morning: scores of Haitians waiting outside our clinic on folding chairs. We ran the clinic from around 8 to 4 or 5 most days, and there would be people sitting out there for 4 or 5 hours waiting to be seen. Luckily the huge tree provided some nice shade most of the day.The brown building just off the left edge of the picture is where we held the clinic, and the white building in the back was where we had lunch and took breaks if we needed some rest.

Behind said huge tree was where my group was stationed. By ourselves, we were Eric, Dapheny, Leley, Grace and Paullette (from left to right, me not pictured). But together, we were VISION. In other words, we fitted older patients with reading glasses and gave out eye drops and sunglasses as we could. As it turns out, a lot of Haitians have eye problems from car exhaust in the cities and from burning their trash, so we ran out of eye drops a little quicker than we expected. Dapheny and Leley served as excellent translators, and along with Paullette they were completely running the show by Wednesday. They tried to teach me some Creyol during the week, so I know know how to say "How old are you?" (Qui la jou?) and "Can you read this?" (Esso co le sa?). We were a very successful team.

 

This is just to show how we stream-lined our table on Tuesday for the rest of the week. Notice the different strengths of glasses organized from +1.00 to +3.50, as well as our reading sample (a French Bible). We were geeking out at our efficiency and logistical improvements. It was good times.

This is the dog that lives at the house, and in whom's yard we were set up. We called him "Dog", and he was sort of crazy. Well, once it got hot, he would calm down and sleep. Kinda smelly fellow.

 

Meanwhile, inside the clinic proper... Melissa got to float between the different stations throughout the week, but one part that stood out was on Tuesday, when she almost got to give a shot! Dr. Mata on the left is an Anesthesiologist who specializes in Chronic Pain, so when 2 women came with knee pain, he thought it would be a good chance for Melissa to "see one, do one". 

So Melissa watched the first procedure, and learned how to keep a sterile field, but as it turns out, the pain in the second woman's leg was in a different spot, so Dr. Mata and Melissa decided it would be best to let him handle it, since she didn't see how to inject if it would have to be below her kneecap. Oh well. She still knows how she would have done it, if she had had the chance.

Another of Melissa's 'jobs' was sticker distribution. As you saw above, there were always a lot of children at our clinic, many simply waiting for their parents to be finished picking up their prescriptions. So we sort of always made sure there was one person who could go play with the kids or at least give them a sticker or two. They also really like to play that hand slap game, especially the boy in yellow here. Everyone was full of smiles!

Don't worry, this boy is not prematurely going gray. There's this stuff called "magic cream" that we'd give to people with itchy, dry scalps, and for the kids we'd help them put it on for the first time. As you can see, Melissa was having a great time!

About midway through the week, after the vision station got clicking, I decided to roam a little to see  if I could help out anywhere else. As it turns out, the Pharmacy was a little overwhelmed, so I rolled up my sleeves (figuratively) and hopped into the fray. I quickly learned where the different drugs were located, how to split and crush pills, and generally how to keep the line moving. It felt like working in a kitchen at a diner where orders are constantly flying in and you have to keep moving at all time to keep up. But it was a ton of fun; I really enjoyed the hecticness of it. Bonnie, standing next to me, was basically running the show back there, and she was phenomenal.

This gives you a better idea of what the Pharmacy felt like. We took the charts on right side of that high table, lined  them up as we finished finding the correct drugs, and handed them down to a nurse-translator pair to explain to the patients how to take each medication. It was noisy, but we always kept it together and got people through quickly.

Melissa expressing her gratitude and words of encouragement to the Haitian medical and nursing students with us. I should have video-taped it, because she did great : ).

Me and Roberto, one of the drivers who took us down to the clinic each day. He helped me with my Creyol during the week too. Pretty cool dude.

 

Makin' faces.

Oh goodness. As you can see, I forgot to bring a razor on our trip. Eww.

Next up: Guadeloupe again, and back home with Rosco!!