Day 3 - Mon, Jun 9, 2025

It was my first day at the clinic, and I didn't really know what to expect. 

When I got there, there was one doctor and one ob/gyn in the front, and it was more or less the ED.  In the back was the "hospital", which had about a half dozen rooms where patients can stay that are admitted. They put me with the doctor. Keep in mind they treat about 8000 people in the entire district, and the nearest real hospital is 5 hours away over that dirt road from hell.

I would guess we saw about 25 patients in my 5 hour shift.  It was a little crazy, but I think I held my own. Side note - there was a big annual festival that lasted all of last week, that pretty much went 24/7.  It appeared that there were a lot of people that were injured or had infections, that just didn't come to the clinic because they didn't want to miss the festival.  I probably saw five people that were septic, which is just nuts.  So Monday was kind of a s*** show. 

One of the highlights was a man who had been severely burned on his back, and it was left untreated and now he had parasites (maggots) in it.  There were also lash marks on his side.  He wouldn't say what happened, but the consensus was that he had been tortured by the cartel.  Thank God we sent him to the back to Brendan to get the wounds cleaned, so I didn't have to do it; and they treated him with a medication I didn't recognize, but let's just say it had a horse on the bottle.

Another was a woman who was limping hard, and when she unwrapped her foot she had a severe diabetic abscess and probably gangrene. The doctor said they would have to remove her foot, and she said absolutely not.  She asked me if I thought they had to remove her foot, and I said not if she didn't want to.  I told her if we waited a few more weeks it would just fall off.  🤣 Just kidding.  No, seriously.

That was it for the excitement.  We have a restaurant in town that we can eat at for free, so I had chicken for lunch and chicken for dinner.  The Main Street in town, actually the only street, is about 3 blocks long, and it is lined with little bodegas, farmacias, and food stands that sell chicken.  So I walked up and down the street and checked out what I had to work with for the next month, and then turned in early.