Monday- Week 4 begins!

Monday- Back in the Out Patient clinic-
Today I spend the morning with Stacy, half of our patients showed up. I was able to follow up with one of my patients that I had worked with the first week I was here, so that was nice!

In the afternoon, we had cake celebrating a birthday for one of the ladies that works in the office, Polly, a delicious strawberry cake with marshmellowy icing= Very yummy! Then the rehab team piled in the Nissan Truck and drove to San Pedro Columbia to meet with Nurse Kevin again and then make a few pit stops on the way back to see patients. One of the patients we went a saw is experiencing Bilateral weakness, distal greater than proximal (for all those of my fellow SPTs reading this), decreased sensation up to her knees, and then atrophy of LEs but not really feet. (But it doesn't really present like Gillian Barre) She has pain in her hips and ankles, which we were attributing to her change of gait pattern- she hyperextends her knees with each step (similar to Dr. Andrew's snapping knee pattern). This patient has been steadily declining over the past 6 months, I believe that was the conclusion reached by the end of the translation with the community health worker. We brought this patient a walker to use to help her walk instead of the walking sticks she was using.  She really appreciated that!  Carley was working with this challenging patient. Due to limited resources in Belize, it would be very difficult to have this woman get an MRI- which is exactly what she needs to determine what is going on, presumably in her spine.

This is the hardest thing to accept regarding health care in Belize- People need medical imaging that is not available, and it is hard to treat something, such as what this woman has, without knowing what is really going on. It is a 6 hour bus ride to Belize City, that is if the patient can get on a bus to go there, and then they need to have money to pay some fee for it, which is also hard to sacrifice for.