Transitions Final Day

The Dental Team had three chairs set up. Dr. Methven works to complete 6 fillings for this woman while dental student Renee Robertson assits and Rotarian Auggie Gonzales looks on.

Dr. Jim Ransom and John Bell begin with set up of dental units in Transitions.

Dental Students Charlie Hartman and Mike Harper extracted a tooth from Rodney, an 11yr old boy who suffers from cerebral palsy.

Saturday was a day the Dental Team decided to spend working on the kids, family members, neighbors, and friends of Transitions. They saw at least 22 patients. Physical Therapist Maureen Gonzales and her daughter Laura Gonzales saw 4 patients.

Meanwhile the Water Team was off to Guatemala City. They met with a fellow Rotarian there who was able to agree that electricity and permits would be allowed for their project. They also secured an agreement that the Rotarian would send workers there to finish the work that the Water Team was not going to be able to do due to lack of time.

Over in Vuelta Grande Walter Want and Ralph Koozer were running into some problems. They had begun work to repair the lines that they had found last year that were broken. Last year we encountered electrical problems because of the Japanese team that had come to build on to the school and in doing so, cut through our lines. This year the goal was to repair that damage. Walter and Ralph were able to reconnect the school rooms all together again. The people of Vuelta Grande attempted to assist them by providing an electrical pole. Walter explained, "I was up on this ladder trying to balance all our lines, and all I heard was a CRACK!". The noise was the electric pole breaking in half. Apparently, the people who set up the pole only bothered to burry it about three feet deep, and thus it was not nearly secure enough and unable to hold the heavy load of the electrical wires. So for now, part of the school remains in the dark, until further work can be done to finish repairing the lines. Que lastima! What a shame!

El Hato Day 2

First things first. The water project is a go! It turns out Jacque was able to negotiate with the town’s representative. The Water team was given 3 options. They narrowed it down to two that they could live with and were finally given the okay to continue working. Cathy said she will do as much as possible today but most likely have to work tomorrow as well. The unfortunate part is that it sounds like it will be going over their allowed budget.

Today Marni Haley, Jan Winder, and Nicole McIntyre made it up to El Hato to join us for the day. They are here to begin their Micro-Banking project. Micro-Banking entails finding a group of women who will agree to a specific contract. The contract states that they can borrow money to start their business and then they must begin repayment at the end of the three months. They pay 1/3 towards principle, 1/3 towards interest, and the final 1/3 goes towards reinvestments. Marni explained that Rotary acts as a liaison of sorts, with a commercial bank in order to control the cash flow. In essence, this allows rotary to control the interest rates which will benefit the women and lower their risk of investment. “The best thing about Rotary is that the people in the community decide what they do. It’s not us telling them what to do.” Marni said. Marni’s past experiences with micro-banking in the city of Quetzaltanengo showed her how the effects can be advantageous to the village. In Quetzaltanengo the education improved, the birthrate increased, the nutrition improved, and the self-esteem of the villagers improved as well. “The biggest benefit is the residual benefit. Micro-banking allows them to make their own future.” Marni concluded. She also expressed some concerns about introducing Micro-banking into El Hato because they are a community that has lost much of their indigenous culture. They have lost their Mayan dialect, only speaking Spanish to communicate with one another. They have also lost their native crafts. So on the surface, it appears there may not be a natural business to start with as there was in Quetzaltanengo. Today Marni, Jan and Nicole came to meet with Irvin, a teacher from the town of El Hato. Irvin has a past relationship with Newberg Rotary because they sponsored his college education and subsidized his living expenses during that time. Irvin’s main vocation is to build the community of El Hato. He already has established classes to help educate the women of El Hato. They are learning to read and write because many of them have never had the opportunity. He also has done classes for sewing, cooking, and embroidery. Irvin came up with the idea for the women to create an El Hato designed blouse. At the moment, the women just purchase clothing which can be very costly. This would give the people of El Hato a craft specific to their village. It is amazing how things work out; it appears the Micro-Banking team has arrived just in time. It will be very interesting to watch how things progress and unfold. Thanks to the Newberg Rotary Club the future of El Hato is on the brink of a very amazing transformation.

PHOTOS 2008

Vetrans, Dr. Alan Methven and Verity Caruso worked together on this patient in Vuelta Grande.

Jill and Tom were an amazing help to the team, taking on the entire sterilization proccess.

Laura Gonzales filtered patients in through the dental room, helped dental students with translations, and followed up giving perscribed dosages and postdental care instructions to the patients from Vuelta Grande.

Dental Students Charlie Hartman, Ben Gonzales, Renee Robertson, and Mike Harper were a valuable addition to the team this year.

Dr. Ransom extracts a tooth while Erin Durdel assists.

Physical Therapist Maureen Gonzales writes out instructions for her treatment plan for a patient suffering from lower back pain.

Maureen Welch and Nesario pose for a photo outside the Medical Team's office.

Dr. Livadais and Dorothy Canty organized medication which was a huge task.

Walter Want fixes the sterilizer while Vuelta Grande kids eagerly watch on.

Dental students Charlie Hartmen and Ben Gonzales conduct oral exams with translations by Laura Gonzales.

El Hato Day 1

Our greeting this morning was the warmest yet! About 20 kids all lined up in their chairs against the wall shouting "Buenos Dias!!" to us as we entered the schoolyard. I think everyone knew it was going to be a good and busy day at that moment. :)

The setup went smoothly for all and in the background the beat of some Latin music played while the students danced in their classrooms in celebration of Valentines Day. We all greeted each other with a hola y feliz dia del carino!

Getting into the nitty gritty, the Medical Team decided to tackle the project of organizing all the medication. Dr. West and Dorothy Caruso made amazing progress with their efforts. PT Maureen Gonzales was also able to treat many patients today. She treated one pregnant woman for lower back pain and gave her exercises to do to help ease her pain. She also treated another woman for neck and back pain. Maureen is using the Mackenzie approach to treatment because the patients are taught exercises that will resolve their pain. In effect, the patients can then treat themselves. Dr. Paquette reported that she was seeing a lot of patients who needed prenatal vitamins, coughs, colds, fevers, diabetes, rashes, and musculoskeletal pain. Maureen Welch was impressed, “Everyone has had their vaccinations.” she explained. That surprised her because it was seemingly the only health care these people receive, there is virtually no continued health care after people receive their vaccinations.

Over on the Dental side, Amy Carusso spent time coaching patients on proper oral health care and the correct way to brush their teeth. Dr. Methven and Dr. Ransom decided to organize their day a bit differently than before. They both saw about ten patients in rapid exams in order to identify their treatments. Using this method, they were able to triage the acute patients to be seen first and it also allowed the Dentists to give the dental students treatment plans that would be challenging. Not to be out done, Dr. Methven challenged himself by performing a root canal for a young woman who looked like she should have lost both her front teeth. He asked us to translate to her that she was too beautiful to just have both her front teeth extracted and that was what motivated him to save her teeth.

In a surprising turn, the Water team showed up with less than pleasing news. Just as they were about to complete the water purification project, the Vuelta Grande town representative sprung a twist into their plans. He wanted the UV system to be installed, BUT, he wanted Cathy Furtornick to purchase all of her supplies from him. Apparently this man owns a company that sells clean water supplies and because Cathy had already purchased her supplies in the states and was not willing to purchase from this man, he informed her that she was not going to be able to go forward with her work. Cathy seemed visibly turned off by this turn of events but remained a bit hopeful that Jacques would be able to negotiate something with this guy. To be continued . . .

Vuelta Grande Day 2

This morning I was able to catch up with Cathy who is heading the clean water project. She was excited about the progress they were making. Her aids are Scott and Mikey Caruso. The guys had a lot of energy and said they had begun with a general inspection of the spring, which is Vuelta Grande’s water source. They went about with Cathy identifying ways to reduce dirt in the water. They also inspected the water storage tank. After their inspections they met with fellow Rotarian Jack Dallies, Juan Jose a representative from Hydrotechnik, and the local water team of Vuelta Grande. Cathy explained that all the meetings were necessary to inform and get permission to put into action her plan to improve the water source for the people. With their consent her plans were to install pipe at the water source, set up a sediment trap and install an overflow into the tank. The water team also planned to meet with Jack again to show him the schematics of what needs to be done to install a UV light system to treat the water. “Previous tests showed a high concentration of bacteria and a UV light system will reduce this.” Cathy said. The water team is essential to this trip because having clean water will help improve the entire village’s general health.

We reached Vuelta Grande and the medical team already had their first patient waiting. His name is Feliz and he told me he was a healthy 86 years old. That is something of a rarity up here where most do not live to such an old age. I enjoyed Feliz and felt that he was well named considering his sunny disposition, in Spanish the word feliz translates to happy in English. Although Flor was unable to come and help translate, Joel a familiar face from Transitions came and assisted Maureen Welch with the screenings.

Back at the Dental Team, they were having a hard time getting patients in the door. The morning is dominated with kids because they are there at school, but many seemed to be extra cautious and even when I tried to coax them they would smile and then run away to play. Eventually we got patients in the door, yet just as we were getting started the sterilizer went south. Tom and Jill transferred to bleach baths in order to keep things running and Walter took the machine outside much to the delight of the children who eagerly watched him work. Walter figured that the electric board must have gotten water on it and just needed to dry out in the sun, lucky for the dental team his guess was completely correct.

Catching up with Dr. Paquette later, she marveled over the story of one little girl. She had initially met her last year and the girl was 4yrs old and only weighed 12lbs. She was severely malnourished and had no motor-skills! They decided the best thing for her would be to place her in a 4 month inpatient program. The same little girl returned to see Dr. Paquette today and she had made huge progress. She had doubled in weight, could feed herself, and pull herself up! Another little girl from last year that Dr. Paquette got an update on was Wendy. Wendy was tongue tied and they had performed a surgery that released her tounge. She was enrolled in speech therapy and now because of her ability to communicate, was being socialized into her community. This was a monumental success because in this culture people with dissabilites such as Wendy’s are hidden away and not accepeted within their communities.

Vuelta Grande Day 1

The morning began early for a few and later for others. Auggie, Walter and Mike began organizing our excursion early in the morning hours, suffering a few miscommunications (something you can almost garuntee to occur in these conditions) but ultimately succeeding in tracking down most of our equipment. The first van left by 8am with most of the men who had generously volunteered their muscles for heavy lifting and set-up duties. The second van which carried most of the medical group and other volunteers followed up later in the morning with other much needed supplies such as water and lunch.

Jan explained to our van that one of her goals this trip is to continue getting medical history for her patients and give them complete exams. The people of Vuelta Grande are supposed to receive medical care from the state doctor once every two months, however this is often not the case. In fact, when the doctor does come around which is on average two times a year, the people refer to a more archaic form of health care in that they are responsible for telling the doctor what is wrong with them (rather than being given a proper exam) and then they are usually given vitamins and sent on their way.

Once we reached the site the medical team was quick to clean house and set up their side. I think all the members of our team were pleased to see there had been improvements to the school. A kitchen had been added on as well as classrooms finished, and most importantly (maybe only for me) a roof had been installed over the bathrooms! With Ralph and Walter’s help the medical group had their electricity up and running first. They saw their first patient by 11am and by 3pm ended their day seeing their 19th patient. Maureen Welch ( a pediatric nurse) was at her post by the door beginning with the initial screenings and Auggie and Dr. Paquette were inside with the follow up exams. Even Physical Therapist Maureen Gonzales was able to do an assessment on a patient and created an exercise plan and donated a brace to a woman suffering from back pain.

Flor, a representative of the Rotary Club of Antigua graced us with her lovely presence today. We hope that she will be able to continue assisting with translating for the rest of the week because she is warm and a wonderful help. While chatting with her she explained that she did not approve of the dog that was tied up by the monkey bars. He seemed friendly enough but she explained her reasoning. On the weekends the dog is kept locked up in one of the classrooms and on Monday whoever the teacher is whose dog it is comes and cleans up the mess from the weekend. I agreed that did not seem to be a very clean system for the classroom. However, Flor assured me it was better than the COW that occupied the space last year! At that time it was not a classroom.

Around noon the Dental team was still struggling with electrical issues so the 4 dental students started a game of futbal (soccer) with some kids. Of course the kids who are like little David Beckhams schooled the dentists by scoring 8 goals within 10 minutes of play, the future doctors responded with 5 of their own goals but I think they had better keep to their aspirations of dentistry. At the same time, Walter and Ralph had quite a time wiring things as one of their tool boxes from last year had disapeared. They were able to jimmyrig some extra wires together in order to fashion an extension cord of sorts. So by 2pm the Dental team was up and running with OHSU dental students Ben Gonzales and Charlie Hartman performing the first oral examinations and Dr. Methven and Dr. Ransom starting in on extractions and fillings. The third chair was occupied by OHSU dental students Mike Harper and Renee Roberts under the doctors’ instructions doing exctraction procedures. Verity Carusso assisted Dr. Methven and Erin Durdel assisted Dr. Ransom while Amy Carusso coordinated the patient flow and translated as needed. Also assisting the dental team were Jill Methven and Tom Carusso who had the dirty job of sterilization of the dental tools.

Unfortunately I was unable to catch up with the clean water project so more to follow on their progress tomorrow.
So although the day began in some chaos of tracking missing tools and equipment, all in all it seemed to run smoothly once people had their setups intact and patients were seen, young and old.


***Pictures are to follow***