During the second week of April, I was able
to do some interviews with diabetic patients.
Since clinic consultations in the hospital are not by
appointment—rather, it’s first come, first served each day—waiting in the
hospital in hopes of diabetic patients to come for their monthly checkups was
not an efficient way to meet patients for interviews. I asked for a list of diabetic patients from
the hospital’s electronic records (potentially illegal in the U.S., but
completely fine here). I started calling
patients that live in Pedro…this resulted in a few “call me back later”
responses and a couple “I’ll come to the hospital this Saturday”
responses. And a lot of no-answers. I did make an appointment with one woman to
conduct an interview with her father. It
turns out he had Parkinson’s and hypertension, but not diabetes. Whoops, guess the hospital’s records were
wrong…but the woman was very helpful and accompanied me to a diabetic
neighbor’s home and also gave me names of other people in the town who have
diabetes.
The next day I went to find “Doña Maria”
who sells empanadas in the market. She
was easy to find and offered me an empanada and sweet-as-syrup coffee after I
explained my project. We did an
interview right then and there, with the sounds of music and children in the background
louder than Maria (my voice recorder didn’t help much here). Maria also gave me names of more townspeople
with diabetes. Word-of-mouth was turning
into a more effective and much more fun way of recruiting participants for my
interviews! Although I couldn’t find the
next couple names I tried to track down...
Wednesday, April 11—reaching insanity, so
with the support of some Facebook suggestions, I bought colored pencils, tempera
paint, and a sketch pad. Entertained
myself for the evening with drawing and painting.
 |
| My painting workspace... |
 |
| The light in my room was horrible, but I still wanted to share my lovely orange drawing... |
Thursday, April 12—last day of cooking
before my little counter-top double-burner stove broke for good. I made a beet, tomato, and onion salad. It’s been frustrating not having a working
kitchen, but also easier and sometimes cheaper to eat in a restaurant.
 |
| I love beets! |
I didn’t follow-through with the “I’ll come
to the hospital this Saturday” responses to my phone calls; I woke up Saturday,
April 14 with a horrible headache. I
laid in bed most the day, but wasn’t feeling any better by nightfall. Sunday I went to Yoli’s again for another day
at the river, which was refreshing, but then I started feeling faint as we were
grilling chicken that afternoon. I spent
the rest of the day in bed…
Monday, April 16 the headache
continued. Tuesday, woke up with no
improvements. I had a meeting Tuesday
afternoon with a doctor from the Ministry of Public Health clinic, regarding meetings
with diabetic or hypertensive patients that he facilitates. The meeting would have been incredibly
interesting, had I not been on my fourth day with this headache. Instead it was possibly embarrassing on my
part, had I been aware enough of how I comported myself. Pablo asked me a few times if I had any
questions but I just couldn’t think! We
parted with plans for me to accompany the next gathering of community members
that he was facilitating in Pedro.
That night I reluctantly (but only because
I had a headache) helped with English classes at the local high school. The teacher is a hospital employee that took
English in college, which qualifies him to teach it. Classes begin at 6pm and go til 10pm; these
evening classes are for students who work during the day, so have to go to
school in the evening. I didn’t do a
whole lot in the classes, just helped with pronunciation, but I liked being in
front of the students because they all were attentive and listening.
FINALLY, I woke up Wednesday morning (April
18) and felt like a new person; the headache was gone! That night there was a gathering of all the
hospital staff in celebration of David Gaus’ 50th birthday. David is the founder of the hospital and was
in Pedro during the week of his birthday.
The party was in the outside barbeque area of the residence hall where I
live. We had fritada (fried pieces of pork), choclo
(a type of corn), yuca, potatoes, and maybe rice and beans, too, I don’t
remember anymore. With plenty of beer to
go around and then cake, too! Towards
the end of the evening, as people were dwindling and perhaps some were
beginning to be tipsy, people (mostly the older men) started telling cachos.
Cachos are basically jokes,
but are longer, more like stories. From
what I could understand of the “jokes” I didn’t find them funny because they
seemed to be making fun of women or minority groups, like blacks or gays. Not my kind of “jokes.”
After the party I asked one of the doctors
in my residence hall about a rash I’d noticed developing on my arms and legs a
couple days prior. She suggested I come
into the hospital for an official consultation the next day. I had a sneaking suspicion that my headache,
tiredness, and this rash was all leading to one diagnosis…the next day, a blood
test in the hospital proved that I had Dengue fever! This was something I’d been concerned about
when I first arrived, since there is no vaccine and it is a threat in this
area. However, besides the symptoms I
had, it doesn’t get much worse (unless I had another type of Dengue) and there
is nothing you can do to treat it but rest and drink lots of water. So I took the diagnosis as a great excuse to take
a nap…but then found enough energy to go dancing the next couple nights. Dengue by day, dancing by night. I can deal with that!
One last thing in the third week of April
was that there was a huge landslide, due to the excessive rain we’d been having. The landslide blocked the route from Pedro to
Quito, about 2
hours from Pedro. The road was closed
for a few days, and when passage opened up, the “road” was actually a
newly-formed gravel road on land that literally wasn’t there before the
landslide. This new road would have been
technically off the side of the mountain—people were driving on a huge pile of
gravel that had slid down the cliff. I
found that rather frightening, but it worked!
No comments:
Post a Comment