Sunday Clinic

On Sunday, clinic is held in San Andres. The drive from Canilla takes about 30-40 minutes. San Andres is a small pueblo of about 2,000 people. It has cobblestone streets and tightly stacked adobe houses. This last Sunday, we made a quick stop at Hogar de Vida, the children's home, to drop off Enrique for the day. Market day is also held on Sundays, so the streets are packed as we navigate our way through town to the clinic. This clinic is held in two small rooms of an apartment complex. As we pull into the walled courtyard, we see the patients lined up to be seen. About 80 numbers had been handed out when we arrived. By the end of the day, we had seen well over a hundred. Here is a picture I took when we arrived.


These young ladies serve as our Quiche translators during clinic. They all do an excellent job of translating and in helping to care for the patients.


Clinic starts off with the Leche(milk) patients first. Here is a picture of a young boy in line with his mother and younger sibling. Children are placed on the nutrition program when it is determined that a child is malnurished and underweight. Babies are given formula. Older kids are given powdered milk, protein drink, and vitamins.


Weights are monitored with every visit to track progress. Here is the same little boy up on the scale. There are currently about 100 kids in the nutrition program divided between the three clinics.


In addition to the Leche kids, the chronic hypertention and diabetic patients are seen prior to the other patients. Here is a picture of one of my favorite chronic patients. With the exception of missing a few fingers and his right eye, he looks pretty good at 77 years old. Between his thick salty accent, my limited Spanish, and his habit of changing around how he takes his hypertention medicine, our visits together have been entertaining to say the least.

Another patient this last week was an older woman with diabetes. She was feeling ill and after our medical consult, she asked me to pray for her. I asked her if it would be 'ok' if I prayed in English. She agreed and I took a few minutes out of our busy clinic day to pray with her.

The rest of clinic consisted mostly of ear infections and prenatal checks. A hundred patients made for a busy clinic day. After the last of the patients had been seen, we stopped to pick up Enrique. We drove home to again find the power was out. We got a bite to eat (by candle light), and had 'church' (using the generator to listen to the IHOP-KC church service with the Fickers via internet broadcast). A good end to a long day.