My, doesn't time fly when you have a blog to try to stay on top of!! May 9 was my last post, and I feel as though I just did it. I guess it's time for an update.
The weeks seem to have been passing so quickly. I feel as though life has been less exciting than it was (I think of those first weeks I was here - camp, jungle) therefore fewer blog updates, but part of that is just me getting used to this new life. In a way I don't want to get used to it all, I'd like to keep on seeing this place through eyes that are new, and have it all still have an impact. But I have realized in the last week or so that I am feeling at home here. And I think that's a good thing. When I've been to a different part of the city and then am on my way home, and as I start to get close to my part of town, and see the Bastion hill, especially at night when all of its homes are lit up, I feel as though I'm coming home, and it's a good feeling. I am a part of this place now.

My role, which I agonized over in the first little while after I arrived, has become much clearer. I am busy now with people who need help with health care issues. My "patient" load increases by the day now. And it's always varied. Sometimes it's incidents at school - little boy came to the office crying with a sore tooth. I got out my flashlight and had a look - a rather rotten molar - not my area of expertise, that's for sure!! But I gave him something for the pain, and we told his mother to take him to a dentist (which a week later still hadn't happened, as I discovered when he came back to me for more Motrin!). Or the mother of one of the kids in the school showed up with an infected cut on her arm. She had fallen in the area behind her house several days previously, cut her arm badly, not had it seen to by anybody, and by the time I saw it, it was very infected. When I eventually saw where she lived, and where she had fallen, it became clear as to why it got so infected. She keeps chickens, and they roam around inside the house and out, and um......well, the place isn't all that clean, shall we say! So that was a week of antibiotics and dressings. And then this week a cute little girl fell and broke her collarbone, so I retrieved the brace that we had used for the little guy who broke his at camp, and now Milagros is sporting it.
I've been accompanying people to doctors' appointments, this seems to be a big part of my work now. It helps to have someone with a little medical background to help the person understand what is being said, and to ask the right questions, and then sometimes to weed out the unnecessary prescriptions after the visit, and just buy what is useful. But in the last week, I have been to 3 different doctors and come away feeling quite positive about the care each person was getting. I haven't always felt so positive after some visits.

Some updates: The lady with the heart problem that needs surgery - we took her to the surgeon this week, and he wants her to see another specialist for a heart catheterization to be sure that surgery is the best choice for her. I was impressed by him, seemed to really want to do the best thing for her, and it was nice to find that he wasn't just going to operate without due diligence. She and I would appreciate prayer for the right decision in this.
The man with the leg ulcer - after more than a month of almost daily visits, and dressing changes, that ulcer is SO clsoe to being healed. That's after many prayers and lots of advice from Canada. (I'll have to find a new excuse to go and visit, they seem to feel that I need to be fed, and often produce a tasty little snack for me!)
And the pregnant girl I've been visiting - I decided last week to take her somewhere where she would get some better prenatal care. We went to the new-ish hospital near here, and saw an obstetrician who I liked and and he did almost all of what I thought he ought to be doing, (and, as a bonus, he speaks good English). So we'll continue on there, and that is where she will have the baby, which is a much better option than the maternity hospital downtown, where I'm told they do many c-sections, some for no apparent reason.

In between all of that, I've been settling into this house, and making it feel like mine. I at long last bought a desk and brought it home yesterday, so I have finally got my computer off the kitchen table and into an "office". My "consultorio", as one of my visitors said as he looked into this room. Maybe I should hang out my shingle - it would be that easy here!

And I'm awaiting 2 big events. The first - my first grandchild who was due one week ago, but as Jen says, he/she seems to have put up shelves and bought a couch and is planning to stay in! I check my cell phone many times a day for the message saying that he/she is on the move! Stand by for that news.
And the other - Kathryn will be arriving for 3 weeks in just over a week. And I'm really looking forward to that.

So maybe life still is exciting after all.