me llamo...AMERRRICUHH

Yesterday (Thursday), my group and I, accompanied by Dr. Cadena, headed to our clinical site. I was grouped with seven of my classmates (Kelsie, Will, Kristen, Kate, Merdijana, Winnie, and Marcela) to the community clinic of Soloy. On Monday, all 23 students toured the three different clinics in the community which we chose to do our clinicals at--Soloy, Alto Cabellero, and Hato Juli. I picked Soloy because it seemed to have the most going on, and served 23,000 community members. Today we took our bus out to the community and the local elementary school. When we arrived in our big white bus, the children all just stared at us. They all gathered around and were interested in us immediately. We exchanged what words we could and took pictures with the children. They LOVED the cameras and seeing their images on the tiny screen. I am so eager to get back to the elementary school next Tuesday and Wednesday and talk to the children more about community health.

Wednesday was our first day in Soloy. We got seperated and assigned different tasks. Kelsie and I were paired up and worked along side the doctor and student nurse. Dr. Cadena informed us that the doctor knew a little bit of spanish, but she lied. All in good fun, though. The doctor would talk to us in spanish (very fast, it seemed), then Kelsie and I would look at eachother, exchanged what words we understood from the doctor, and decide what he said. Hand signals and sherades helped a lot. We got to measure pregnant women´s abdomens and the doctor would tell us when they started their pregnancy, and he would have us (in spanish) tell him what week they were in, what trimester they were in, and when their expected due date was.

Today in the clinic of Soloy, Marcela and I started with immunizations, mostly flu shots. I was happy to be there for Marcela´s first IM injection--she did awesome! And she´s fluent in spanish which helps enormously. After I gave about seven IM injections, I traveled over to the clinic´s Emergency Room, which is very different from the ER back in the states. In the Soloy ER today, I mostly did antibiotic IM injections and other IM injections. I assisted in an IV as well, along with the nurse´s help.

I am very excited for my clinical experiences in Soloy, as well as the other clinical experiences that we have yet to see. The community here in Chiriqui is amazing, and the people are so welcoming (although we are like aliens to them). Tomorrow we are heading to la playa in David, about an hour away from our compound. I am excited to hang out with friends, surf, and enjoy the sun and the Pacific ocean.