Salybia Mission Clinic

Today, Saturday, I woke up at 6:30 am to get ready to leave for my first experience working at the Salybia Mission Clinic, located in "Carib territory" in a town called Salybia that is up in the jungle-filled mountains.
The transportation was an old 1970s bus with no suspension and sitting on the seat on top of the wheel turned out to be a bad idea. I got motion sickness halfway through and my friend had to have the driver pull over to the side of the road to vomit. Everyone turns out was taking dramamine.
The drive is 1 1/2 hours and the route starts by passing through Portsmouth and passing the airport, climbing the steep (one lane) mountain road to the jungle.
The infrastructre was very impressive, a good size yellow building, made of concrete not aluminum. It was nicer than my PP clinic back in Austin in that sense. It was also new.
Dr. Andrews was the only physician working today and she specializes in Emergency medicine. This became apparent during two of the cases. She was great at allowing us students to do the entire patient history, present it to her in front of the rest of the group and allow us to treat the patient if possible.
My partner and I had a patient who came in with a large ulcer on the medial side of his ankle. He had had the ulcer for 23 years and it started small but now was significantly large and covered in necrotic tissue. My partner and I got to use a scalpel to scrape away the necrotic tissue, thoroughly clean the ulcer, and dress it.
Another patient came in with a large, infected abcess on this hand. The students working with him had to make a small incision and drain the pus. This was very painful for the patient and I felt incredibley bad for him and tried to comfort him.
Other students saw patients with more minor or general health concerns. We ate our home-packed lunches and by the time we were ready to leave it was already 3pm. We returned to campus around 5pm and I had slept on the way back after borrowing some dramamine from a friend.
I then walked to the Diwali puja and dinner with Swati and Nitisha and after returned to my apartment tired but content.



More later!