Tracking Ed Monroe as he travels to Haiti and other exotic(?) places

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Wednesday afternoon

I am outside on the balcony, my favorite place here, enjoying the breeze and blogging. We would have been done today at 5 PM but I stayed to fill the prison order. More on that a little later. First and foremost a note to Donna: I miss you very much-especially today at lunch when Dan served potato soup. Almost made me cry! It’s harder this time for me than in the past trips by myself.
In other news, there was a problem with a certain female physician and her delicate garments. I was advised not to divulge many details as it might even embarrass me! Why is it that I always seem to be around when these incidents happen? Also today, one of my female pill packers was complaining about pain in her rather large breasts. I asked my interpreter for help in determine what she wanted me to do as I could not FULLY understand what she was telling me. After the translation, without further delay, I rushed her to Sara Baysinger’s bench so that I would retain my clean cut image! Ha!
At noon, when we tried to close the door and take a break, we had not one but two instances of people entering the pharmacy after they were told that we had closed and demanding service. The last one, I found out later, had pulled that act at every station in the clinic and we all fell for it. Oh well!
On the medical front, the Phenytoin issue has arisen and will be an issue at the next medical advisory committee. And then there is the prison issue. We were asked to visit the local jail this mission. Dr Bill, Sue, Dick, Eric and Dan H. made the trip. The word is, do not end up in Jacmel jail. It is retched. I filled the medication orders and almost all had worms and malaria. All were given vitamins and iron. There were some strange orders but this is not the vehicle to carry that knowledge. All of the inmates, male and female, are housed in the same area but there is restricted access that keeps the gang rapes in check.
I had addit onal help in the pharmacy today. I asked Sharon to come in and fill orders and she did very well. Dr Elsa also volunteered this afternoon and I had her calculating doses for chloroquine, Ivermectin and vermox. She also was a trooper and excelled in her work. At this moment, there are several people helping me package pills.
I seem to have drawn a crowd at my spot so I will run this through the spell checker and get it published.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ED!! Water, Water and more Water! The first rule of keeping healthy in Haiti. I'm eagerly awaiting your next post- it's almost like being in Jacmel.
Always, Katie K