Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday-

 another mobile day to Barranco- a southern town, closer to Guatemala; located right on the ocean. It was much hotter than I expected, without the sea breeze, but there were beautiful views of the ocean and Guatemala. We had passed Barranco by boat last weekend when we went to Guatemala. The people here were much more outgoing than the typical Mayan or Mopan people we’ve been working with. They are called the Garifuna people.  It was at times harder to evaluate patients because they were often too social and distracted. But we powered through- we performed most of our patient care in a “hut” that was connected to the town’s religious gathering space.  It was thatched out of palm leaves and was so neat to see all the intricate work that went into building the roof. 

 The gorgeous view from the town:) what a great place to go on mobile!

a street in town

When we returned from Mobile- I was exhausted- I had maybe gotten 4 hours of sleep Tuesday night due  to multiple storms, so I took a power nap before Caroline and I had to give our presentation on Neck Pain.  The PA and med students have all expressed such interest in learning more about what a PT does and how they can help their patients more before referring them to PT. needless to say, some in our audience were excited about what we were presenting on.  We lectured for about 45 mins then went to wait for a bus into town.  Well the 6:30 bus never came and the 7ish one didn’t come, but we did see a bus coming so we flagged it down. It was a worker’s bus, driving men back from working in more rural areas, but the driver was nice enough to stop for us and drive all 13 of us into town for dinner.  The man told us that he used to drive for Hillside years ago.  We went to Seaside Heights again for dinner- the fry jacks (fried puffy tortillas) there are amazing so we wanted more of those.

We didn’t end up eating our food until 9 at least! We were all starving by then.We all came back and I crashed!

Thursday- I finally slept more than 5 hours straight :)- that makes the biggest difference! We had Out-Patient clinic from 8-12, but I only saw 1 patient, and Caroline saw 2. Slow morning, but I worked on editing presentations for training of the rehab aide for our restorative program.

In the afternoon we went to meet with Nurse Kevin- a Nurse in a close town, San Pedro Columbia- who was working with us on our community project about Headaches, neck pain and back pain.  We are teaching a class the 2^nd month we are here and we wanted to see where we would be teaching it and hear what other suggestions he had. Then we stopped and made a home visit to a patient we saw on Tuesday who was complaining of more pain.  

I worked out after we finished things around the clinic then we had case studies from the med and PA students that we listened to- then it was CRANIUM time- we played this the first night caroline and I arrived in Belize and it was a great introduction to everyone and their personalities. So tonight it was great fun as always-  acting out crazy things, trying to hum songs that we really don’t know, and drawing funny words to have our teammates guess!