Day 5: Cotton Tree Village

You'll never believe this... St. Scholastica made the Belizian newspaper. Amanda bought a copy of the Belizian Times, started reading, and saw "Julie Pearce reports..." It was the entire story that I put together which originally aired in Duluth. Somehow, it ended up down here in their paper. What a hoot to be reading about ourselves in an International news source.


On our way into the village today we stopped at the pharmacy again to stock up. The lady is so sweet, she let PZ go in the back room of the place all alone and get all that she needed to get for prescriptions and such for the day. We spent almost $400 on medications to help these people. In just about another day we are going to start having to all pitch in on our daily runs to make buying the necessary medications possible. The pharmacist was so inspired that she is going to close up shop one day next week and get on the bus to go into the villages with us. If anyone wants to have a hand in our journey at this point, we could greatly use any financial donations. At this point all I could suggest would be sending it to my paypal account at: tsjitter@hotmail.com There's no better way you could donate something that would go more directly to people in need. Just a thought.
Although we saw over 80 patients today, the pace seemed a lot slower. We went to the village of Cotton Tree, an area slightly nicer in comparison to where we've been. Many of the other villages had to deal with skin diseases and illnesses. Here, it was nearly one out of every 10 people who was showing signs of severe diabetes and hypertension. For those familiar with blood glucose levels, this one mans level was at 542. In perspective, much over 130 is reason for concern.


Another boy came in to the clinic with a severe heart condition called Pulmonary Atresia. He and his mother came into the clinic with a letter from the doctor explaining that he needed a surgery that could only be provided in the US and it was necessary to saving his life. Ro and PZ made a few phone calls back to the states and to Mayo Clinic and got the ball rolling for this child's chance at surgery. We pray something works out.


On a lighter note, we somehow ended up "kidnapping" some child today. We went on a run to the hospital in Belpan (sp?) to drop off some patients in need of more immediate and extensive treatment. When the van left the hospital, some girl had gotten back in with some of the other patients we were picking up. We got back to our clinic, found a large cyst on the girl that needed attention immediately and when we asked for where her parents were we discovered her parents were back at the hospital. She had just gotten on the van and thought it was her ride. She had been at the hospital to get treated and be immediately driven back to the hospital where she had come from in the first place.Lastly, Mat, Hanna, and I made it into the schools today to do some teaching. We spent some time educating the kids on diabetes, hypertension, and disease prevention. Mat and I made up some silly song on the fly. We even danced for the kids.

That was the scoop on today's timeline, we're off to the city to go out for dinner and do some dancing. Should be fun...