June 12th

Today I didn’t take any pictures , sorry! But I figured I would blog about my experiences in case anyone thinks this is interesting lol.  Plus I don’t have a way to use the calling card that I bought so this is the only way to communicate with my family and friends. Anyways, today I woke up at 6am and after seven hours of sleep I was still pretty sleepy. I am coming down with a sinus infection and it’s been pretty rough trying to keep up but I loaded up on Allegra, Day Quil, Afrin and coffee so I’m holding up pretty well! Today I got to be in the “Wound Care” area in the clinic. This area was packed with people who had diabetic ulcers, infections, arterial insufficiencies and venous insufficiencies. I did a really good job communicating with the nurse, tech, and doctor in Spanish today. I could actually understand what they were saying and I did most of the work on the wounds by myself. The doctor also explained a lot of differences between each ulcer and how the treatments differ. I actually understood the differences in Spanish even better than I understood in English haha! I got to remove the old bandages, clean the wounds with saline,  and apply new gauze and creams depending on the wound type. Some of them were huge and smelled horrible. Thankfully they didn’t ask me to remove the debridement or else I probably would’ve passed out lol. They taught me a more proper Panamanian way that they wash their hands so that was cool.

I had one patient who actually had maggots in his wound, which was interesting. I was able to talk to a lot of the patients in Spanish about my experiences and they loved hearing about it. All of the people in Panama are so helpful and so happy. Even the people that are coming in with crazy wounds were joking with me and smiling. It’s awesome to see how appreciative they are and how much they respect the nurses because in the United States it’s so different. I noticed that the doctors and nurses stopped working around 10am to have breakfast even when there were a lot of patients in the waiting room. The patients just waited there patiently and didn’t say a word about it. During their little breakfast break they let me try one of their Panamanian foods that they make which is called “Tortilla de maiz blanco y coco.” This translates to a white corn tortilla with coconut.  I thought that they said cocoa so I assumed it would be sweet but it was actually coconut lol.

No one here knows English because it’s not necessary but they do like to ask me English words just like how I ask them about random Spanish words. They appreciate the nursing students because they are able to learn from us and in the US nurses can’t really learn much from us haha. I really like the people here and I love working in this clinic. After clinicals we went back to the University of Panama to have our class and the students gave their presentation on a couple chapters of the book. Sarah and I have to present our chapters to the class tomorrow. J After class we are hopefully going to pick up our clothes from the Laundromat so that should be interesting! After that we are starting P90X in the living room….as if we needed another reason to be tired! Oh well we are all feeling like we need to work out so it should be good. After that, were going to make dinner and work on schoolwork. I am a little overwhelmed with schoolwork right now so hopefully I can get all these assignments done. Tomorrow I am doing allergy shots with this old Panamanian Doctor who keeps telling everyone he likes me lol… great. I told him I had a boyfriend today and he said I need one in Panama and the United States and he laughed. Everyone here has a really good sense of humor so tomorrow should be funny. I’m exited for Friday because we are going to a Nutrition Clinic to teach people about proper nutrition so that should be nice. For now Im going to sign off of here but thanks for reading… hopefully you enjoyed it even though it’s a lof of rambling and no pictures J