Guatemala Day 4- The Mural

What another spectacular day in the humble town of Coban! Today was filled with the most heart felt human connection; with bursts of laughter, tears of joy and connections with this team and the people of Coban that I will never forget. We started off with another early morning with breakfast at 6 am. We had the same as the last few days, eggs with refried beans, sour cream, salsa, bananas with granola and orange juice. Muy delicioso! We then rode the bus through the gorgeous dense rainforest to the clinic. The mood of the day was automatically set, although I was getting nervous for my rotation in triage.

When we arrived at clinic everyone was cheery and eager to start a busy day! KK and Dr. Stephenie helped Katie, Logan and I get set up in triage where our job was to welcome people to the clinic, take their vitals, chart their growth curves and get them ready to see the necessary providers. KK was especially helpful in showing how to do everything in the right order to be as timely and efficient as possible. After she took the first patient as an example she let the three of us tag team the next young boy who had Trisomy 21, he was extremely gracious and let us all take his heart rate and other vitals multiple times to get a feel for everything. After that the line in the clinic started to grow exponentially and Logan, Katie and I started tag teaming multiple patients at once, KK referred to us later as her code team, which is a term used for a team of nurses in the emergency room in the hospitals. Usually the hardest patients, that required two of us, were the babies. They squirmed and/or screamed as we touched the cool metal of our stethoscopes to their little chests, and we made them more mad as we had to take all of their clothes off to get an accurate weight. What was the solution? Burbujas claro que si! Katie blew bubbles in their little faces and they squealed with laugher as I would attempt to get a heart rate or respirations. We had to restart many times because they liked to grab, bite or swat at the stethoscopes, they were adorable though so it was worth it.

One of my favorite cases from today was Fernando, he was five years old a young blind boy who was radiating with energia and joy. He loved to feel everything around him and soaked in every word I attempted to say. While I was taking his vitals he rambled on and on, much of which I was trying to understand. He said, "Tu sabes" (Do you understand me?) dramatically. I laughed and told him I was trying and learning but it was hard to understand when I was also trying to listen to his Corazon. He laughed too and said he would go easy on me. I also got to triage Dani and Anhia, the two young children with bone displasia in their feet. They remembered me from yesterday and were so excited to be back, they were squirmy today because they had been running around outside, yet again with more burbujas, with some of the other members of the team. Heart warming.

Overall in triage... I felt like I was in my element. The day went by too fast and I was eager the entire time to continue with patients. KK and Stephenie commented multiple times about how well I was doing and my confidence was boosted exponentially. I will forever remember my day in triage as what launched my nursing career and I will look back on all the things that I learned today for the rest of my career, I will also look back on these moments if am ever doubting this career again because I have come to realize the real impact I can have on people, both physical and emotional. Not only did they teach me new techniques and clinical skills, I learned the emotional side of the job. How to care for all parties involved, the patient, the caretaker of the patient and myself. Body, mind, soul and spirit were aligned for me today as I soaked up every ounce of information they threw at me. I was especially proud of our team work when things got crazy in the afternoon and we all stepped in to help Stephenie when all of the afternoon patients showed up late to their appointments at the same time; KK, Monse, and Esmeralda (the other nurses) were busy and gone, and we had two kids, an infant and two adults to get to all different places. It all worked out and went smoothly!

SO so much more happened today and it was all incredible. But one last notable thing was how close our student team has become, we relied on each other so much today to get all of the work done and trust each other in that work. As we sat on the back stairs our backs faced to the mural that depicted the dump leading to a road of flowers in a garden and continuing on an unknown path to a large question mark... represented esperanza... hope... which reminded me of this bible verse (Jeremiah 29:11) as we sat on the back stairs watching the sunset over the village, "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" and that is exactly what we are creating for not only ourselves, but for this humble community of Coban.