Posting this under lock and key because the LJ account has been given out as a contact point for the group as a whole. Makes it hard to be my usual blunt self.
I am freakin’ exhausted. We’re doing a good thing down here, no doubt, and it feels good to work at capacity. However, we rise with the sun at around 6am. When I say “rise,” I mean “give up on pretending to sleep on the concrete roof, with the roosters crowing, the dogs howling, and the bugs biting.” We commence clinic between 7:30 and 8:00. We bang out perhaps 150 patients before breaking for lunch at 12:30 or 1, and continue through to wrap up at about sunset at 6. This is hot, sweaty, smelly, intense, emotional work. We’ve been passing nearly 300 people per day through the clinic – and I’ve been watching our limited supplies ebb away. On Sunday, when I saw the reality of 1500 pounds of medical supplies – I started saying “we’ll be giving out hugs, and not much more, by Friday.” I’ve shortened the timeline on that. Tomorrow the hugs will start.
For example: We have a moderate supply of liquid tylenol and a couple of other liquid drugs. They come in half gallon jugs. At first we dosed a 30 day supply of these in specimen cups. Once those ran out, we had about 100 small plastic jars of Azithromycin that we consolidated into ziplock bags and used for liquids (re-labelled, of course). Those ran out today. Tomorrow we start double bagging liquid in those same ziplocks.
Hugs on Friday.
Did I mention that we’ve started seeing flat out, honest to God, Typhoid, Malaria, and TB? Awesome.
Anyway, I am once again called to meet and pray. In a humorous twist, I am offering the devotional this evening. Wish me inspiration. I’m reading from Shantedeva.
