Some Real Work

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Mrs. Foo cooked an excellent breakfast for us this morning: oatmeal, eggs, sausage (hot dogs), and toast with guava jam. I wasn’t so sure about the jam since I don’t eat many fruits but it was excellent! I am going to try to find a couple jars in town before I leave. The whole team headed to the hospital to start work. I spent a little less than 4 hours registering patients. I get all their information like medical background and current problems so that the doctors don’t have to take time doing that. RAM has a huge database of all the women they have seen so far and the results from their tests. It also has their birth date, patient ID number, and their home village. Many of the women we saw today were driven or even flown in because their village is so far from Lethem.

Today I registered 21 patients. They were all schedule patients who have already been seen by a RAM doctor and needed more done than just a Pap smear. After I registered a couple, I would take them to the other building where the exam room is and have them wait there on the doctor. I finished registering everyone before lunch but many of them still had to see the doctor because the procedures were a little longer for these women we saw today. The hospital fixed a very good lunch for us, and then it was back to work. I had to take all the purples (the forms with patient information) and put them in a notebook. I had to check each specimen taken and make sure all the paperwork was filled out correctly. We finally wrapped everything up and headed back to the guesthouse.

Dad spent the morning at Manari checking out a possible site for a RAM center. It would be a headquarters in Guyana where there would be a hospital, optometry, dentistry, and an agricultural center. I’ll probably get to do a rough draft of the grounds. The doctors left the house to help out with an emergency c-section of a woman who had to be flown in. Dad and I went and ate dinner: another excellent meal cooked by Mrs. Foo. For dessert she fixed some sort of coconut custard pie. I don’t really have any idea what it was but that’s what I would like to think it was. It was awesome regardless. After dinner was a cold shower (no hot water here). I attempted doing a few pieces of laundry by hand. We’ll see how they turn out tomorrow. I didn’t even try doing my jeans. It would take me an hour. We sat around again tonight in the lounge but not as late as the night before.

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