Becoming the Patient

Last week I spent two days translating for Dr. Matt Tincher in the ¨clinic¨ run by the Lifelighters medical brigade in the small village of Duyure. I am not a medical person so I was strictly there to translate and do whatever else I could to help. The translating went well, Dr. Tincher knew a lot of medical terms in spanish from previous years and that was great since I can speak Spanish but do not know medical terms. We were a great team. We saw many patients with ailments ranging from frequent headaches, to arthritis, to heart murmurs, and lots of ear infections. I had a good time translating and learning more Spanish and meeting new people at the clinic, but did not expect to take that work home with me. Two days after the translating was done and the brigade was going back to the States, I noticed several small red bumps on my forearm that were rapidly spreading. One thing you need to know about me, is I am not o.k. with having skin rashes. I have had several encounters with poison ivy and poison oak and simply having those rashes caused a great deal of stress for me. So, I was not happy to find these bumps on my arm. I was even more unhappy when I talked to Alli and she ended up giving me medicine for scabies. For those of you that do not know what scabies is, it is like having lice in your skin. Anyways, Rebekah, my wonderful friend, has helped me apply the medicine to the lice, and has been so supportive (I cant thank you enough). The other interns have also been very interested to track the progress of the scabies and all of us girls have to use a special soap (sorry about that). I guess this is just one of those things that you know might happen when you live in Honduras for two months.

Shanna Crossland