Afterbirth
We delivered a brand new healthy baby girl today! It was an incredible experience to deliver the child in a safe, clean environment instead of imagining the child being born on a dirty ground with no help from medical professionals.
My favorite moment from today was secretly plotting to dump ice cold water on the face of a patient with a heart rate of 177 beats per minute associated with dizziness. With a heart rate that high, she very likely either had atrial fibrillation or supraventricular tachycardia. Without an EKG machine, we gave her some medicine to slow down her heart, but it only went down to a rate of 160. She still was experiencing dizziness so at that point we decided to try to elicit a vasovagal response to slow down her heart rate by splashing ice cold water on her face without her even knowing about it. It’s not as effective if they know it’s coming! Her heart rate went down to 118, her dizziness had subsided, and she said she felt much better. We apologized for the unpleasant surprise but she was very happy with the result. She was sent home with some more medication, and she will be followed up in the near future using DrChrono’s EHR!
The group of people here working together with one common vision is truly an inspiration. They are from Tennessee, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Rhode Island, and other states. We are staying at an orphanage for girls who were orphaned by the earthquake that occured one year ago from tomorrow. They brighten our day consistently as we are working when we see them jumping rope and smiling ear to ear. On our team we have 5 doctors, many nurses, educators, students, and helpers making the clinic function at its maximum capabilities every day.
Tomorrow’s our last clinic day in Camatin, and then we move on to L’azil. We saw about 235 patients today, making our two day total 460 patients! Patients were telling us that they walked up to 6 or 8 miles to see us. More to come…