Day 10

Hola Mi Amigos!

Hope everyone is doing well today! I know I am!

Got up this morning around 6:15- slept in a little bit by accident! woops, but we are at the hostel now and not at Franks house down the road, so I don't have to worry about getting up so early. I took a shower and moseyed on to breakfast which was eggs and ham. YUM. We all boarded the bus at about 7:30 ish and headed to the clinical place. Today was great! No mountain climbing though. I will actually say that I did not miss the mountain climbing because by now I must have walked about 40 miles and my new shoes that I bought the day that I got here, will be garbage by the time that I go home. My feet and ankles are killing me and today my knee started hurting! MOMMMMMMMYYYYY where are you!!?! lol. Okay done complaining now!
I got to the clinic and got to shadow a nurse who walks around the city.  It was a lot of fun. We had 10 different houses to visit today and ended up seeing about 12 houses. You could tell that the nurse that I was with today absolutely loved her job. They do a lot of patient education and primary preventions to keep people from going to the hospital. This is called "the first step of care" here. The nurses educate on things like the importance of various things such as self breast exams, immunizations, washing hands, healthy diet, and also what to watch for if they have children (ie: swollen glands, flat feet (plantar), washing hands, and diarrhea and vomiting (due to various bacteria). This nurse carried around a big backpack as well, and to each person in the family she gave powdered electrolytes and medications to help tame the foreign bacteria that could be ingested into the system. The families seem to really enjoy when the nurse comes to see them, and it appears to be a very social aspect of their day. The kids usually love the nurses as well. I took a blood pressure today and realized that it was very high, I thought that it was my mistake so I retook the blood pressure in the other arm and got the same results, so still thinking that it was my error I asked the nurse to take the pts blood pressure and she too got the same high results as I did. The nurse immediately wrote the pt a referral for an emergency visit to the clinic. The pt told me that high blood runs in the family so the pt was not surprised by the blood pressure reading. I also got to give 2 injections today with the sterile field and I seemed to do it successfully! It was so much fun. Courtney and Gupe got to give injections today and they did such a good job! We had a great day. After we got home from the clinic, some of us went to town to go shopping at the mall or to stop and buy things I did not really buy anything except some shampoo and flowers, but it was a nice walk today. Dinner was amazing as usual we had beans, rice, steak pieces with sauteed peppers and a traditional Costa Rica salad that I do not know the name of and it was soooooo good, I put it in some small tortillas. SO YUMMY !! Now it is time to go to bed :)

Goodnight Family!
-Kara Kelly ..