When it rains here, it pours...

Well at least the Trujillanos think so....but being from Louisiana I feel right at home! It has been raining all over Peru for the past few weeks. There have been billions of dollars in damage and countless people without homes or shelter. The tourists had to be airlifted from Machu Picchu. Water s/10 a bottle and crackers s/6. And I am still going to the jungle Friday...and they are definatly in the rainy season now...

The rain has come to Trujillo as well and the streets are flooded and everyone’s roves are leaking. Because we live in the desert most people were not prepared and their homes have suffered damage. Even the clinic, which the summer got its roof repaired, had a ton of water when we all arrived this morning. Everyone worked for two hours and eventually the rain stopped for a bit but we really need to do some work on the roof later today.



On another note...Terri and I just got back from a visit to Hospital Belen (a 500 year old hospital in the center of Trujillo). We went to the Pediatric ward to visit Dr. Florez who is a friend of the clinic Obstetrician, Sonia. Dr. Florez is helping us out with a patient in the CMP who needs some special attention. The inpatient pediatric ward was a little worse than I imagined. Having been in ER at Earl K in Baton Rouge I thought I had seen it all. Belen is a big important hospital in one of the biggest cities on the coast. I wasn't ready for bugs on the floor, water leaking from the ceiling (well…it is like that in all of Trujillo right now!). They had 2 ventilators and 2 pulse oxs for the whole floor. The other children that needed ventilators had a medical intern with bag in hand manually ventilating. That’s a normal reality. Every 2 hours they switch. This is a 24/7 job…. manually ventilating each breath. The hospital has no portable Rayos X so if they need that they have to move the kids (with all their equip) to the other side of the hospital to do it. There is one 14 yr old boy with renal failure who can’t get dialysis because the hospital doesn’t have it. Literally it’s not available. One thing he really needs right now central line catheter (7 French). Its 156 soles…that’s like 50 bucks. Insurance doesn’t pay for everything and if the family cant pay….then the kid just sits…and waits. The docs and nurses and interns sometimes get together and hacer una cancha (a collaboration literally cancha is popcorn which is a common snack here…its like everyone throws in a bit to buy the stuff) to pay for a drug or treatment. They literally only have 2 pulse oximeters for the whole ward which is sometimes 24 kids. Its not that these physicians are at fault…they are working so hard (manual ventilation…it doesn’t get tougher than that). Sometimes you just don’t have what you need and you just have to deal with it and do the absolute best you can. Unfortunately even with the best doctors this can mean a death sentence for a patient.

We are trying to see if we can come up with the funds to buy that tube, we are supposed to be going back soon to visit the neonatal unit and maybe do a night shift in Peds. Hopefully we can get the line for him, it’s just hard when you are surrounded by so many needs. Who do you help? How do you decide? We are working in the morning, lessons and devotionals together in the afternoon, taking patients places and running errands in the afternoon, then dinner and then go to Starbucks to get internet and do stuff at night. I havent gotten a good nights sleep in a week! Always fun stuff to do and its great but I am tired!