A big day

Good Morning! Two emails from Mark last night:

"Hi! I'm exhausted, but still kicking. Up at 5:30,bkfast at 6:30. We made it to the school that we converted into a med clinic about 8:30. Picture me standing up in the back of a pickup holding on to the ever-present metal bar system/light bar system that every pickup has here. It was still hazy in the valleys, and we were winding through 1 1/2 lane dirt/rock road at 10-25mph for about one hour. Came around one turn and in the background behind 3-4 levels of green/brown loosely forested hillsides, rose from the mist several huge flat topped volcanoes. Yep, erupted last in the 70's they said. Confused on which direction from here...but beautiful. Orange,yellow, green birds- one crazy woodpecker. Amazing. Massive toad, as big as South Whitley bullfrogs was just hanging out on our porch. At the school, we were welcomed with about 200 children all in the schoolyard. They sang the national anthem, and said what appeared to be a prayer all together. The kids, some with family there, abandoned all their open construction classroom, about 10 of them, to us for the day, while they moved from station to station or watched through the window frames. Checkin, weighin and measure, eye chart,fluoride application, hemocrit/anemia check, and physical exam with pharmacy clinic station. I precepted 3 residents in the clinic station for the morning, and then did finger pricks with hematocrit checks all afternoon. The children were separated by language, but boys and girls are still the same. Giggling groups of girls, pushing boys for the front of the line. We gave vitamin A, multivitamins with iron, and de-worming medicine- seeing them in most all of the stations to over 250 children and few adults today. Most of our trip will focus on such"preventative medicine" school based interventions. However, I will be staffing the base clinic here in Santa Lucia tomorrow, and "on-call" tomorrow night for any emergencies or deliveries- don't worry, I have a local doc as my backup."

And then later that night:

" I just attended the birth of the 7th child for a small honduran woman. Seems that she was past her due date by about 2 weeks. After a hard labor, the baby came out with meconium, so I was asked to help resuscitate the infant. They had oxygen an a neonatal mask, along with basic suction. A little slow to come around, but the infant looks good. Meconium has the risk of fluid beginning to accumulate on the lungs even now, so we'll see what the evening holds. wow."