Wednesday evening January 23, 2008

It is almost dinner time and I am going to start this now and finish after dinner. I have just had a nice shower, a glass of white wine, a few peanuts, and about ½ hour of just sitting at the end of my work day. Life is good-almost.

We are again experiencing internet problems. After we got out on the net this morning, we again experienced the problem of getting out and seeing the indication that there is a problem with our account. Help is supposed to be on the way, yet tonight. I’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Last night, I joined the boys on the porch about 8 PM and we finally struggled off to bed at 10:30 pm so it was a very short night. To top that off, we smoked a very nice Cuban cigar. I enjoyed the smoke but I can still taste it in my mouth. Last night, I brushed my teeth 3 times and the taste stayed with me. Bet you are laughing at me for that!!

On Tuesday, we did see 317 patients plus about 20 of Garron’s surgical patients. I am not sure, at this moment, the count for today. It was estimated in the millions but we had to cut off the estimator’s beer as it is affecting his estimates. I suspect it will be near to Tuesday’s total
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Lots of screaming kids today made for one of the nosier clinics I can remember. So far, the only mosquitoes we encountered were on the bus in Port-Au-Prince. We did see a bat last night. Maybe he is keeping the bugs in check. The entire crew’s health remains great. Debbie’s ankle swells up in the evenings but is down in the morning. Sharon Doran seems to attract insect bites and we are wondering why she is the only one bothered by that. No speculation, please!

We have had interesting cases galore. I hesitate to write about them. I do not want you to worry. I do not want you to think about all of the sickness, stress, and conditions here. We had one small baby with HIV and that was a tear jerker. Today, we had a VERY cute 18 month old girl in the pharmacy line. She has a little backpack, a darling dress, pigtails with bows, and beautiful large brown eyes. Sharon beckoned to the child and she ran into Sharon’s arms. That lasted a short while and when I tried to get a picture; our girl decided that Mom was where she wanted to be. We tried for several minutes before we could get her to look at the camera. We put her down, to fill her order and she promptly decided to come back into the pharmacy and sit right in the middle of the traffic lane. That is like sitting at the center of the busiest intersection in your home town at supper time. The traffic did not bother her at all. She played with her stuffed toy, tried to make eye contact with Sharon, her mother, and even me. That was a real treat. We had several large families today. I think there were about 8 sets of 7 family members. That is a challenge for the pharmacy as well as the interpreters. We were not done tonight until sometime after 5. There was some sort of a crisis involving treatments late in the afternoon that slowed down the providers.

It is now early on Thursday morning so I’ll post this to blogspot. AsI told you earlier, our internet help is on the way and he arrived after supper and gave us the password so that we could log on. It seems that Hughesnet noticed the increased activity on this account and needed to check it out. I will help Dick to store it in a safe place. I need to write more but I want this out for you now.