The Giant Moth Effect

Fluttering. Fluttering was all I could here. The electricity is gone and I am under the protection of my mosquito net, but all I can do is listen, while the mystery animal flutters around the room. Is it a bat? Giant moth? Pterodactyl? Should I get out of the net and brave the unknown? Can it penetrate the net? What do I do if it does?

Third world problems, am I right?

A lot has happened in the past month but here are the highlights:

•   2 groups of volunteers that assisted in EKG training at the hospital, improved nutrition courses   with mothers groups, personal hygiene presentations at local schools and one beautifully          painted school cafeteria.
•      Superman Graduation and Wonder Woman class.
•      The arrival of our new wonderful intern, Maghan (yup that's the correct spelling) !
•      Hired 2 local town residents to act as our new Community Operations Assistant and Community Health Advisor.

We are kicking butt and taking names! I DO want to highlight our EKG training and implementation program, though.

An EKG machine was recently donated to FIMRC. A volunteer nurse came down and led a small training for all the Doctors and nurses in the area. Up until this point the latest technology the Hospital possessed was a tongue depressor (exaggeration, but eh Hospital is a dud), so an EKG machine is a big step up.

The training was great and I sacrificed my ample chest hair (it took 3 nurses to shave it off) in order for the Doctors to practice. The machine paid dividends almost immediately. The next day a Haitian woman was brought to the hospital. She could barely move and looked so weak. They ran an EKG on her and it resulted in a Myocardial Ischemia, which is a blockage that could lead to a heart attack. She was immediately rushed to the nearest adequate hospital. Now that we have this machine here it is amazing the Hospital was able to function effectively without it. Working in preventative health/education can be frustrating sometimes as we hardly see the fruits of any labor, so it’s nice to be able to facilitate something that has an immediate impact and can help improve a local health system.

Its like a forest up there!

Proud of their new equipment! My heart is clean :)

In other news, our house has flooded twice with 3” of water. I was in a meeting when Hannah called to tell me that, “there is water everywhere”. We swept it out with brooms. It was laughable. I think the problem is solved. Time will tell.

Anyways, that’s about it. There is really not a whole lot of cool things going on, and I know you guys don’t like to hear about work, bleh.

Here is the winner of this weeks most adorable photo of Eddy:

vroom vroom!

Adios

P.S. There is nothing worse than having full blown diarrhea with no running water/electricity and a full house of volunteers sleeping in the room attached to the bathroom. Just saying.