So, I (Lauren) am the “health care administrator” for Makarios! What exactly does that mean? In the past week and a half since we’ve been here, I have given out quite a bit Tylenol during a stomach virus epidemic, placed two sets of sutures, bought medicine for ringworm and supervised a blood transfusion.
My main job is to take care of the kid’s day to day medical problems. We have a lot of “gripe,” which includes any malady from colds to allergies where the person is coughing or has a runny nose. People carry around gripe cloths to wipe their nose, which can be shared, or if left in one place, are just picked up by the next person who needs one. Besides gripe, the most frequent complaints are stomach ache and fever. Oh, and scrapes and such, which often just need a bandaid and a little TLC. (Thank you to whoever donated the otoscope specula… All we had were adult ones that I was having to clean and reuse… gross!)
In February, I took care of a pretty nasty moto burn that one of the former students had. The main mode of transportation here is motorcycles, and the exhaust pipes can be dangerous. B had let his burn get infected before I started taking care of it, but after a week or so of daily debridement and cleaning to remove infected tissue, it healed up into a lovely scar. Quite a few Dominicans have such scars (and now Andy does too).
I’ve learned that the one thing that these kids are absolutely TERRIFIED of is needles. One of the kids had dropped a rock on his toe, and had dirt and other undesirable things inside his toe which needed to be cleaned out. Improvising with a dental needle and anesthesia, I had to come at his toe to do a digital block with what looked like a horror movie instrument. It took four people to hold him down for that, but once his toe was numb, he had no problem with me digging in it with forceps. After working for an hour trying to get it clean enough to save the toenail, he left, and the next day just pulled off the tip of his toe. Brave kid, now without a toenail for the rest of his life.
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Big kids can be scared of needles too. One of the students who came down for a spring break mission trip cut his leg with a machete, and I had to suture a small spot on his leg. He stoically endured the lidocaine and sutures with all his buddies watching, and will have a lovely scar as a memory of his trip to the DR. Those who were there watching and assisting were a little more wary of the huge needle. I just like sticking people, and I’ve gotten pretty adept at using the dental needle. Thanks Bud for leaving it behind!
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My job for two weeks when I was here in January was to pick lice out of hair. We don’t let the students come to school with lice, but we want them there, so if their parents won’t pull the lice out of their hair, it falls back to either me or their teachers. And since the teachers have too much other stuff to do, I had the fun job of pulling nits out of hair. Quite possibly my least favorite job EVER. God taught me a lot of humility during those few weeks.
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Part 2 to follow…
