ENT DR trip - last half

As the week progressed, I started to get a better feel for the patients we were seeing. As one can imagine, they are very different than what I was used to at Loyola. We saw a lot of advanced disease. For example, we had patients with ear infections never treated and now suffering from the complications, thyroid goiters bigger than my arm, and grossly metastatic cancers. We also saw a lot of your average, every-day complaints like gastric reflux, allergy, and chronic sore throats. The people there would take antibiotics or steriods for any problem they had. I don't think they needed a doctor's prescription to get antibiotics. One patient showed me a huge jar of Amoxicillin and said she took one or two whenever she felt bad - kind of like how I take an Advil. It took me a while to explain that it was not way antibiotics should be taken.
The people there are tough. They showed a lot of hardiness to our exams and procedures - more so than what we are used to seeing in the States. Most kids let us do an ear exam without any fuss at all! They also all waited very patiently for their turn in the clinic. Every morning when we made our way to the clinic at 6:45 am, the place was packed with patients. But everything progressed very orderly. And no one ever complained about how long they had to wait.
As we approached the end of the week, we learned that we did not have enough medicines to give out to patients. So, we had to write down the name of the medicines and explain that they needed to go to a pharmacy to obtain them. We fashioned a home-made prescription paper for them. We also had patients come on the last day of clinic who would have really benefited from surgery, but at that time we could not fit them in! It was frustrating to have this happen. We resolved to work better with the health promoters to ensure that, in the future, these patients could get in earlier in the week.