strabis-wha?

so i just got home from the puerto plata public hospital - rana i know you would be proud. there is a public, where the families have to basically take care of the patient and bring sheets, food, water etc and a private hospital which is just expensive.

so a couple months ago there was a medical team working in a nearby village and scott made a little friend who was terribly cross eyed, which scott had been when he was a wee little thing. so the other day we went up to the clinic and found a poster taped to the door saying another ministry down here was having a free eye clinic to help correct cataracts and strabismus (which i just learned means cross eyes-ness) so scott thought ..."fantastico" and took him for a consult last thursday. then on sunday scott was supposed to bring him to the hospital for around 12 (p.s i dont live alone anymore. a new friend named amy came in saturday night...) so amy and i were deciding what to do for the day and pdaddy mentioned he had gotten an email that said at the eye clinic they could use help, so we tagged along (maybe that didnt make too much sense though).

anyways, when we got to the hospital it was 'jam packed' (which i want to learn to say in spanish because i think it is a hilarious expression - i'll keep you guys posted) and everyone assumed we knew what to do since we weren't dominican, however that was not the case. finally after waiting for a little while in the chaos i decided to sneak myself into the office and ask if they needed any help. it turns out they needed translators and the little amount of spanish amy and i knew was more than all the other 'gringos' combined so we were enlisted.

what happened was they organized all the cataract people in the morning and then by the time we got there we helped wrap that up and then we started organizing all the 'crazy eyed' kids in order of age for their next consult. we would bring them in about 3 at a time and do a little physical (had to make up some awesome spanish descriptions since i couldnt remember all the right words to explain their results) and then ask some more history questions. next they were taken one by one into the next room to get some eye drops to dilate their pupils or something of the sort, but all the kids hated life at that point and we didnt want the others to notice. despues - after we walked them down the hall to get blood work done, which took a decade, and they were brought back to be re-examined and organized into a surgery schedule for this week depending on their results.

we got home around 6ish and i went to sadrak's church in charamicos and got to see his family and some old friends. then we went to one of his friends houses where she and her mom cooked huge amounts of rice and beans and also crab for about 12 of us as we squeezed in to stay out of the dumb rain - which ended up catching me half way home on the motorcycle and amy said i came in looking like a wet dog...

today we decided to go back out to the hospital to help with translations and whatever else but at first we were of no use. we were almost ready to leave and go to the clinic in nazaret but then i again wandered upstairs and asked some random white lady in scrubs if she wanted help. she was ecstatic. so once scott and amy agreed we were given scrubs (scott was busting out of his - he looked like a fruity bouncer ha). anyways our main job was to help with IVs (setting them up and then holding down the frantic kids - our little 4 year old buddy ended up taking about 5 of us to hold him down and he still managed to bite bernard). after we did that we got to get in on a surgery and see them remove some of the muscles in the eye and poke things in it and stitch it up. it was great. we took awesome pictures in the OR (which reminds you we aren't in canada) but amy forgot her camera cord so until we figure something out you will just have to leave it all up to your imagination (p.s. that is a google picture).

i shall try to write again sometime soon (but rana i dont want to give you too much of an excuse to stop studying)
love you all