El Salvador Mission Trip 2012 - Part 2

Counting pills

 A regular ritual before we can hit the road to visit the places we go to provide medical care is counting pills. We pre-package 30-days supply of pills in little plastic bags that have symbols of a rising sun, mid-day sun and setting sun. We pour out volumes of syrups and liquid medication into one-person size bottles. This takes quite a while and by the end of night, not many of us are left smiling as we are here at the start of the activity.
In the background you can see our evangelism team learning street skits and dances they used to reach people on the streets while we saw patients.


Are they any more left?

 Basically, the evening before our 'work week' begins is used to set up and package all our meds and plan what we'll take.














on the road

 Once we're all packed, we hit the road. Our daily bus ride took 2-4 hours each way. The roads weren't the best. Because of constant use, these vehicles often lose their shocks and their suspension gets shot. One of the teams that came down with us were a dedicated group of auto mechanics that stayed behind at the center and overhauled, repaired and maintained all the vehicles and equipment.







Onto a smaller pickup where our bus could not go


For me personally, it was fun to load the bus, then unload the bus and load the pickup truck, then unload the pickup truck and set up everything in the places we provided care. We all worked hard to do this. It was good exercise.


Setting up

 Here we are outside a church in Las Delicias. We set up our clinic inside that church and saw approximately 200 patients that day.














Dr. Boris Magana 'checking in'  a patient.

  Once we were set up, there was a system. People in the area were told beforehand that a medical team would be coming and they could come and get free care and medication. They were given coupons (free) ahead of time. Once they showed up, they filed into Dr. Boris' station. He took down a chief complaint, filling it out onto a medical form on which the next station could write down vital signs, blood sugars.


Checking blood sugars

  This year, thanks for donations from the makers of OneTouch, we were able to check blood sugars. We diagnosed several new cases of diabetes and some known cases with uncontrolled diabetes. One patient with a blood sugar of 600 (normal: 70 to 100) told us that he knew he had diabetes. He said the local hospital was out of insulin. We are trying to build a clinic where patients can come and receive continued medical care. For now, Dr Boris sees them rotating visits through the various places we were about once a month.

Checking vitals

Once patients had checked in, the stepped to the vitals station where nurses checked vitals.

Nurses wrote the vitals onto the patient's 'char' (a single sheet given out at the triage station above).



Getting busy

 To keep people amused and occupied during the several hours wait it took to process and see everyone, we had a couple of volunteers entertain. Zip (Fran Davis) sews her own clown costumes and is a great hit with the children every year.











Zip (Fran Davis) with a couple of fans




A family waiting to be seen