Chaos

The clinic today was one of the most unorganized, chaotic beautiful days ever. We had one doctor with us and we set up in the house of a resident of Lomas de Marchan. The house had a dirt floor with roosters in the back. Not the most sterile environment. Welcome to Peru. We served about 60 patients. I thought we would just give some basic, easy medical care. Not so.

We had a little girl come in named Andrea who was about three years old. She had burns all over her chest. A couple of the nurses debrided her scabs. That means they scraped them with a knife. Yikes! We expected her to scream. Instead she just wathed. I thought that was amazing. But we learned if the burns are second degree the chance is she didn't even feel it. She was alone. No parent came with her. Very sad.

Later in the day we met Luis. Luis is a six year old boy. Part of his colon was on the outside of his stomach. He had a colostomy but the family could not afford the bags needed. His mother had a t-shirt tied around him to catch his waste as it exited his body. We are going to purchase some of the bags he needs. For about $1,000.00 he can get an operation to fix his condition. So the nursing students decided they wanted to use the extra few hundred dollars from their trip money to help pay for Luis' operation. Tomorrow we will be able to tell his mother the operation will paid for. We need to raise a few hundred dollars to close the loop on this need.

So today Ashley, Braedyn, Stephanie, Jon, Alyssa, Brannyn, Rebecca, Jess, Elisabeth and Rachel just changed the world.

What an awesome day.