Blogs from Saint Lucia, Central America Caribbean - page 3

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So I have started my placement on internal medicine now. There are a lot more patients and a wider variety of conditions, so it's been really interesting. This will probably just be a really long post about the most interesting things I've seen and learned in the last two days. I saw a man with elephantiasis. Both of his legs were extremely swollen and his skin was scaly with lots of nodules. He was in because his skin breaks down a lot and gets infected. If you do a google image search for 'elephantiasis' you'll see lots of examples of the swelling. if you google 'elephantiasis hyperkeratosis' you'll see how their skin can look as well. It's caused by a parasite, a type of worm, which I knew. But I didn't know the worm was transmitted ... read more


Today we went to Soufriere to go to the sulphur springs. People travel to these springs to bathe in the hot water and have a mud bath. You can tell when you're getting close to it, as you begin to get a strong smell of egg. They advise to wear a dark or old swim suit, because the mud stains and sometimes the smell doesn't wash out. The smell wasn't noticeable once we were actually down in the baths, or maybe we were just used to it by then. It was really busy there with coaches of people from Martinique visiting. We spent an hour or so covering ourselves in mud, waiting for it to dry and then bathing in the hot springs. The mud was so difficult to wash off though. I showered there, and ... read more
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Saturday July 7 - Last night I got a message from Verena saying she tried to call, but Michael told her to call back at 7am. I told her I'd still be asleep with any luck, so not to bother. Of course, Michael did not know this, so he came knocking at 6:30am to tell me Verena would be calling in 30 minutes. I told him she wouldn't and went back to sleep. The door and large windows to the room - most of the building - is made with shingles or slats, so you can easily talk through the walls. I didn't even have to get out of bed to have this conversation. Fortunately, I was able to go back to sleep. Verena sent me a message saying to meet her between 12:30-1pm at Zaka's ... read more
Canaries
Beach by Pigeon Island
Mongoose in the yard


Exactly halfway through my time here now. I finished A&E yesterday. Nothing too dramatic happened in my last few days, although I did walk in to the ER on Thursday to see all the doctors doing CPR on someone. I waited for 10 minutes and then left, because it seemed a bit morbid after that. Otherwise, I got to see quite a few patients, mainly just sprains and vomiting and things you see in the UK. Next week I start internal medicine, and I'll be there for the rest of my time here. So yesterday, we went to buy some plants from sort of like a garden centre. But in St Lucia, they don't need greenhouses, so there's just a little forest off a main road that has hundreds of plants and you just pick what ... read more
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Wednesday July 4 - I got up earlier today but got a slow start in things. I walked around the property before breakfast, with a dog, of course. I couldn't make it to one of the beaches because there were four cows in front of the gate, but I saw everything else. Finished my yogurt and used the internet and all of a sudden it was 10am, the time I had planned to leave. I paid Verena and she wrote a couple of things down for me for the next part of my journey, and then Josh took me over to the see the two tiny kittens they brought home yesterday. They are six weeks old, a bit young, and they will be ratters, ideally. For now, they were just super sweet tiny fluff balls I ... read more
Petit Piton
Anse Chastanet
Anse Mamin


The last few weeks have flown by, and its odd to think that I'm almost halfway through my time here! A few extra things about the hospital, resources and having to pay for healthcare. I found out yesterday that the hospital doesn't have a CT scanner. This means that if you've had a stroke, or been in a car accident and you go to this hospital, you can't get the scan you need. There is a CT scanner at the private hospital nearby, so patients have to be transferred to there. Obviously in cases of a stroke or potential internal bleeding, getting the scan as fast as possible is really important, but these people might not get one in time if they don't go to the private hospital first. There was a paraplegic man in the ... read more
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Sunday July 1 - Terrible sleep. Still thinking about moving into a tent, but will see what happens when I get back from St. Lucia with Erika gone. I got up around 9am and of course can do nothing since everyone is asleep. They were all woken up to go somewhere for lunch with Erika before her flight in the evening. Once they left it was just me and the guys who work there until 2pm, or so I thought. Just after they left, we heard Lisa sprained her ankle and was coming back. Fortunately, she wasn't on the other side of the river yet. I finished packing and at 1:30pm Ben helped me get my things and myself across the river. I still find it difficult and a little scary to cross, holding the line, ... read more
Sugar mill ruins
Sugar mill ruins
Sugar mill ruins


Today the other girls and I went to Windjammers resort again. There were no jellyfish in the sea this time, so I got to swim in the sea and the pool. The sea had lots of fish in it. The water is clear enough for you to see them, but it would have been really cool to have a snorkel. There are fish around here that will eat the dead skin on your feet just like at the foot spas. Unfortunately it did rain on us a couple of times. The first time it really poured down, so we had to take cover in the bar for half an hour until the sun came back out. We used the time to have fish tacos for lunch and some cocktails though, so it wasn't all bad. Whenever ... read more
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Just a quick one to talk about a patient that came in the ambulance today. A man had been working in his garage this morning when a disgruntled ex-employee came and attacked him with a machete. He had a really deep cut to his arm which was almost to the bone (it had gone through all the skin and fat layers), and a cut to his cheek which went almost the whole way through, and a couple of other superficial ones. He was ok, but going into shock so needed fluids, and all the wounds needed stitches. He was a bit out of it, but the fluids helped bring him around again. Shock makes me people a little illogical though, as he refused to let the doctor clean his wound because it hurt too much, but ... read more


A&E is split into two parts here. When you arrive, the nurses triage you and decide whether you are ill enough to need a stay or treatment here, in which case you'll go to the ER side, or if its a minor problem that will just need a review and prescription, in which case you go to the Primary Health Centre. The Primary Health Centre is just another room in A&E with an examination bed. I spent the day there, which was actually quite fun. All of the problems were minor, and things you'd see at a GP in England. I saw UTIs, ingrown toenails, heart palpatations, etc. Although they were simple problems, it meant I could do the full history and examination, and I knew the diagnosis and the sort of management they'd need and ... read more




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