Palacios, Bolivia

I can't believe this adventure is almost over. It has flown by. We've treated way more patients than I expected, and I am pleased that I am finally able to communicate a little better with our patients and clinic staff. My favorite experience so far has been traveling out to the surrounding villages. Although, frustrating due to our limited resources on site, we had a great time presenting our public health interventions about oral hygiene to 40 children in one village.

The most difficult situation I have dealt with on this trip has involved one of our patients, who was so severely anemic that his hemaglobin level was 4. He was almost white, he was so anemic. To make a long story short, he was taken to the nearby "hospital" last night, and our whole stritch team was blood typed this morning to determine if any of us could donate blood. Two of us matched his blood type, O+, leaving us the only two with the pressure and responsibility of deciding to donate our blood to this man in grave need, or not. All eyes were on us to help this man, who needed our blood, and at the same time, the two of us had seen the conditions of the hospital...not an ideal place to have people mess around with your blood. To me, this posed an ethical issue, and two of us were stuck in the middle of it. We came to Bolivia to offer our voluntary services, and our limited medical knowledge, so did this mean that we were also expected to willingly have our blood taken, even if it meant potentially risking our own health?