Monday, Tuesday in León,

Monday/Tuesday in León, June 22 - 23, 2015
Monday:
If you don't understand a word Carol says, you understand that everything is ok.  So we learned that we could not work in the Clinic where we had originally planned to work, but we understood we had a place that maybe would have one or two rooms to work in.  While the week before they were short of providers, this week we have five plus our Medical Director, Dr. Ilana Addis.
 
So Monday comes and we walk a block from Hotel Real to Asociación Mary Barreda, an NGO where the focus is on working with victims of violence and preventing violence against women and children.  There is an ante room, then a step into the back area.  Like most buildings in Leon, it has the idea of an inner courtyard that is open to the air.  Each room is off that courtyard.

We walk into a room that is perhaps 11 x 20 and thankfully has a small wall air conditioner unit and two fans.  This turns out to be our cryotherapy room and command center.  We do the teaching, the computer entry, storage of bags and general planning in this room.  There is a rope with a sheet to divide it into an exam room as well.

There is a small exam room that Dr. Alborz uses and this is also the LEEP room.  Then an open kitchen like area that is divided into two exam areas, in the open air half is the sterilization area.

The first day we see nine patients--thanks to Carol wanting to make sure the day went smoothly.  It really did go smoothly.

In addition to the usual teaching activities, Dr. Alborz Alali gave a lecture to the four OB/GYN residents who came, and it was well received. Dr. Eduardo Zapata interpreted for him.

Tuesday:  
Original Plan Dr. Alborz gives lecture at 7am or 8am to students and faculty about cervical cancer, but Monday night in an attempt to learn the real time, we find it was moved to Friday. This morning starts, only two nurse trainees are here before 9.  We get a call at 8:30am asking where Alborz is--there are 70 people waiting to hear his talk....
Breath...  The lecture went well.

Ended seeing 14 patients in the morning and at least one in the afternoon. Three cyros and one LEEP were done.  Teaching of three OB/GYN residents and three nurses and one general physician in two groups for the afternoon

Evening plan seems to be going out to music and then dinner.  After a cold shower.

 Dr. Carol Kimball, PINCC volunteer in Leon

Totuguero: friends, memories, dreams

Tortuguero
by Barbra Lanier

saddles for sale in Totuguero

A place I’d never heard of.  Yet, I now have friends, memories, dreams of Tortuguero.

rubber riding boots with spurs

Tortuguero is like a town out of a western movie.  There are horses everywhere.  The streets are composed of packed dirt and country music can be heard blending with a kind of salsa.  Saddles, cowboy boots and riding gear are for sale at the market on Main Street.  It takes four and a half hours to reach Tortuguero by boat, and eight by car (when the dirt road is passable in dry weather).  The weather in June is hot and humid, so most days are spent dripping wet.  There is running water, but it only runs cold, not hot.  There is electricity...most of the time.

Juliana with patient

Team resting on the porch

But one thing Tortuguero does have is a hospital, run by a wonderful woman, Dr. Violetta Torres, and staffed by four fine doctors and four caring nurses who learned much from the PINCC team about examining for the HPV virus and treating women who had it so they would not die of cervical cancer.  That’s why I went to Tortuguero and that’s why I took my 15-year old grand daughter, Juliana, on this trip.  And that’s why I now have friends, memories and dreams of Tortuguero.

Thanks to Rotary

 Selmira - Nurse Midwife with 
Rotary donated Cryogun

Classroom in Tortuguero Nicaragua

Classroom exercise 

Tortuguero 

on Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua.  

 

Photographs by Madelene Todel.

Teaching in Kukrahill

  
Dr. Virginia Hanson, Medical Director, teaching in Kukrahill, Nicaragua.  

Posters made by Emiko Omori on the walls.



Photographs by Madelene Todel. 

Meet Doña Maria Bravo

If you are very lucky, there will be one person at the clinic who knows where everything is, where everyone  is(!).  We were so lucky in Tortuguero.  Meet Doña Maria Bravo, protector and caretaker of the PINCC team in Tortuguero.

Muy intelligente, resourceful, compassionate and funny.  No matter the question, the answer was "ask Maria Bravo."  On the first day, she was the first person to sign up to be examined so she could be a proud example for the more timid women in the clinic waiting room.

She and I shared speculum washing duty on the outdoor back patio.  Rain or shine, we would laugh and talk while we washed the tools of our trade.  Then she started dancing just a little bit.  And I showed her a salsa step I had just learned-and we were off.  Dancing and washing speculums with the rain pouring around us.  Well, why not? 

Jan Lecklikner, PINCC volunteer in Tortuguero and Kukrahill, RAAS, Nicaragua

Jan Lecklikner with Doña Maria Bravo

Volunteers Venture...

Nicaragua,   June 2015

PINCC volunteers venture out into communities that tourists don't easily get to. We flew from Managua to Bluefields on the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast and the next day took a four and a half hour ride to Tortuguero, a remote primarily agricultural community on the Atlantic coast.  Tortuguero is accessible by boat and, in the dry season, by road west to Managua. 

Tortuguero is a small hamlet without paved roads.  One sees horses, pigs, chickens and dogs on the streets.  On market day men and women came to town on horseback and  many of the women we examined road up to 12 hours on horse back in order to be seen.

Our first week included eleven PINCC volunteers ranging in age from fifteen to  - seventy years & eight Nicaraguan doctors and nurses.  The medical staff in Tortuguero included a number of Nicaraguan physicians trained in Cuba.

By Madelene Todel, CNM
(posted to PINCC facebook 6/18/2015)