One sweltering week down

We are sorry about the delay in posting - I know that each of you are as excited to hear about our first week at the hospital as we are to share it. The San Ignacio hospital sits on a small hill just above the central part of the town. It is a pretty rickety wooden structure that houses the outpatient clinic where Sydney and I have spent most of our time so far. The hospital has a male, female, and children's ward each of them having about 4 beds as well as an ER (three beds) that is the only room in the building with any kind of air-conditioning. There is also a dental clinic as well as a maternity area.

The place we are staying is in a nearby town, so every morning Nurse Westby arrives at 7 to pick us up and take us into the hospital. We have each had the opportunity to visit the wards and work with nurses in the ER but the majority of the time we are assisting Nurse Westby in the outpatient clinic. They see an average of 75 patients each day in the clinic so as you can imagine, it is quite a busy place. We are getting PLENTY of practice taking manual blood pressure and collecting vital signs :). Once the patient has seen the doctor, they return to the clinic and Nurse Westby administers injections and does a ton of wound care. The most excitement I have experienced was during my first day at the hospital when I was working in the ER and a man came in with a badly mangled/severed finger. He was a furniture maker and had gotten his finger stuck in the saw (mom, I hope you are remembering to be careful with your table saw!). To my surprise, the nurse I was working with, Nurse Lopez, was not fluent in Spanish so my limited Spanish was extremely helpful in this situation since the patient didn't speak English or Kriol. Nurse Lopez let me clean the wound and while I applied pressure, she ran for the doctor. Although the doctor was entertaining 2 American medical students, he allowed me to assist with the suturing!

Since our last post, we had a fantastic jungle adventure (the photos will have to be saved until we return but rest assured we won't forget to show you - here is a sample) that included a phenomenal 5 hours of spelunking/caving to a depth of over 375 feet. This cave is not one of the more well know in the area, in fact, we were they only two there with our guide! Like many caves in this part of Belize, it was filled with Mayan artifacts - pottery as well as human remains/bones. Words can not describe the feeling of being so close to over 1000 years of history encapsulated in the sparkling (this cave was called the crystal cave since it was composed almost entirely of quarts crystals), dripping, eerie darkness so deep under ground. Outside of the cave in the jungle, the mosquitoes were as intense and oppressive as the heat. However, at the end of our hike we bathed in a turquoise cenote (limestone sink hole) and just before sunset our guide spotted a keel billed toucan (the national bird)!

On Sunday Westby and her family took us to Xunantunich a nearby ruin that was home to the tallest "tower" structure in Belize. From there we were able to see into Guatemala and all the way back to San Ignacio.


We are being extremely well cared for by the family we are staying with and look forward to sharing stories of our day with them each evening. One update we have from our last post is that another record has been set for the internal temperature of our room - on Wednesday it was 94 degrees! Not being accustomed to this heat, we both were extremely over heated - so much that we actually had a fever (yup, we are nursing students who packed our own thermometer). So, using our "critical thinking skills", we applied cooling blankets (did I mention that we are dorky nursing students), and rechecked our temperature only to discover that it had decreased to 99. Despite it all though, we are still making each other laugh and really could not hope for a richer experience.



quote of the week: " I almost burst into flames - really!"

This weekend we will venture into another cave and hopefully spend a bit of time relaxing and catching up on some much needed rest. We will post again soon and hope that everyone in the States has a good time watching the fireworks tomorrow!

-Miriam and Sydney