Happy Birthday Kara Johnson!

Had to give a little shout out to one of my followers, Kara, since I am not there to wish her Happy Birthday in person! Hope you have a great birthday! Eat some cake and ice cream for me! If you have already looked at my pictures, check out the link again because I have added some more including pictures of where I am living and the Rehab Center that this post is about.

So yesterday morning, Sarah and I went to el Centro de Rehabilitation, which is the physical therapy place here in Monte Cristi. The country is split up into provinces and there is a province called Monte Cristi, but we are in a town called Monte Cristi as well, which is a small portion of the province. This rehab center is the only one in the province so they provide a lot of therapy needs to surrounding people. There are 2 other provinces that it serves as well, one as far as an hour away (the border town of Haiti called Dajabon). Needless to say, they stay pretty busy and it is a valuable resource here. This is 1 of 19 rehab centers in the DR. In Versailles alone, we have 3-4 physical therapy places, so just imagine how rare this is and for a small town like Monte Cristi to have one is amazing. Dr. Garcia is the president of this center and has worked hard for 2 years to start this center. As you can probably already tell he is well known and does a lot to serve his community.

When I came down in 2007, the rehab center was in a small house and just starting up. Now it is in a large building that was constructed with the help from a church in Spain. And there are plans to build a 2nd floor which will consist of offices for the staff and a large event center for weddings, birthdays, etc because something like this doesn't exist here.

Currently they offer electrical stimulation, ultrasound, and physical therapy services. They have some equipment such as a bike, a treadmill like thing and bars that people use to learn to walk again. They also have a kids gym which has a mat and exercise balls to do physical therapy for children with problems. You can see these in my pictures. There is a doctor that comes from Santiago (2 hours away) on Mondays and Wednesdays to see the new patients and a psychologist as well. They also have a main physical therapist and for now a Korean nurse who has been helping and the new German student will be working there as well.

Dr. Garcia explained yesterday that they have currently started social security here in the DR, so if patients have this, it covers their PT. I guess like our Medicare. If they don't have this, it is private pay, $800 pesos to see the doctor and $400 pesos for therapy (34-35 pesos = 1 dollar)
However, there is a social worker and they have a sliding scale payment plan for those that can't afford it. One other payment option is that if you are written a prescription by a doctor from the public hospital, there is no charge because the employees of the rehab center are paid by the public hospital.

So we toured this, talked with Dr. Garcia for a while about the information I just shared and then played with a little girl while her grandfather was getting treatment.

We walked back to the orphanage from the Rehab center, probably about a 10-15 minute walk but it had to be 95 degrees with 100% humidity! Wow was it hot!

After lunch, I worked on the health camp curriculum again, typing up what we had come up with on Monday. Spent about 2 hours doing this until my brain hurt and then went to play with the kids out on the playground!

After dinner, we didn't have any activities planned so we just hung out with the kids again for about an hour. Later we played Apples to Apples up in our rooms (the leaders/interns)

There are several team leaders/long term volunteers here. Coco is the country director who has been here for 5 years now. She does a little bit of everything. Julie is here for 2 years, already been here one and she is in charge of the English Institute where they teach English to 5-8th graders in the community. Heather is here for 1.5 years and arrived in May. She is working on a Spanish literacy program because many children and adults can't read here. Christine is a 1.5 year leader here until May and she works on the public education in the local school systems, developing a curriculum for volunteers to teach. Bryson is a 2 year volunteer, here for another year, and he does media stuff for OO. Vivian is a 3 month intern and she is teaching English at the Institute. Sharon is a two year leader who was here for 6 months and returns this Saturday to start her 2 years. And then there is me, the Health Corps leader!

Well, time for a little siesta before heading out to Batey Juliana with Dr. Garcia, probably to give more shots!

Picture Link

I uploaded my pictures from yesterday to Kodak Gallery and here is the link. Let me know if you can't see them!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLanding.action?c=h1rs3en.8m7q0fnr&x=0&y=-gi6qaz&localeid=en_US

El Primer Dia (The First Day)

So today started my "work" for this fall. I received my objectives to complete this fall which include making a template for a week long health camp that anyone could put on, with or without health experience. They do camps here in the summer for the orphanage kids, the city kids, and the kids in the bateys.

Side note - You'll hear me refer a lot to the bateys. These are small poor villages that are located on a farm owned by a company called Banelino. On the farm the grow bananas and rice and sell, at least the bananas, to Europe. So on this huge farm, there are 15 individual villages, some big some very small, but all very poor! This is where Dr. Garcia works in the afternoons, offering "clinics" to a different village each day of the week.

Ok so anyway, I have to develop a generic template for people to follow to be able to put on a camp to teach stuff such as basic hygiene (hand washing), anatomy, nutrition, exercise, and dental hygiene. I also have to develop modules for volunteers to follow to teach public health in the schools. There is very little public health education/knowledge here in Monte Cristi, so Orphanage Outreach has started doing this over the past 2 years and I will be making up a curriculum for volunteers to follow to be able to teach this. And last but not least, I will be figuring out how all of the volunteers in the spring (probably around 200 college students) will be used in the clinics, schools and bateys to help out and teach. So in short, I have my work cut out for me! Working 8-5 at my job might be easier :)

Sarah, a girl from Canada, who is interested in going to med school helped me this morning with planning the health camp template. Then I played with the orphanage kiddos some before lunch. After lunch we have siesta here (Brian, can we institute this when I return to work!?) and I again played with the kiddos. There are twin 3 year old girls here that are adorable. I have a picture of one so far.

After siesta, we went to Jaramillo, one of the poorer bateys. I helped the nurse vaccinate adults against tetanus and Dr. Garcia saw 30 patients in about 1 hour. He saw them sitting at a table in someone's house and they sat in a chair. The 2-3 patients I observed him see, he did not even touch. They said they had back pain and burning with urination so he gave them a prescription for a UTI. Another was a 5 month old baby who the Mom said had "gripe" which is cold/flu here and he just wrote her a prescription for "antigripal", no exam, nothing! Quite different than the states but more than what they would receive otherwise!

After dinner tonight we had movie night with the kids and watched Madagascar 2. They really enjoy movie night and this was a new movie to them!

Tomorrow I am taking Sarah to the Centro de Rehabiltation (Physical Therapy Center) and we will spend the morning there. There is a Korean nurse named Sarah that has been here for 2 years and she will be there, along with a German exchange student that just arrived so it should be a fun morning.

Miss you all! Take care and enjoy the fall weather!

P.S. I thought I would upload lots of pictures to this but I've been trying to upload one for the past 5 minutes and it still isn't up so instead I'll just put a link on here to my pictures so everyone can look at them!

I've arrived!

Just a quick note to let everyone know I have arrived. I got delayed in the Miami airport for 4 hours which was a little rough but I had my computer so I got to watch most of the UK/Florida game...which wasn't all that exciting! Anyway, I got to the orphanage around 2am and got some rest. It is quite toasty here so took a little while to fall asleep with the heat and Dominican sounds but slept like a baby once I fell asleep. We had breakfast and then I met with Coco, the country director, to lay out my goals for this fall. After lunch I unpacked and played with some of the kids for a bit. Then I went with a 2 week volunteer from Canada to Dr. Garcia's house and we chatted with him for an hour or so. He is the doctor that I worked with when I was here for 2 months. I had dinner after that and am now headed to church. Will post more later and some pictures (once I take some) but just wanted to let everyone know I have arrived safely and am settled in.

Procrastination...

So as most of you that know me well can imagine, I am T-minus 4 days from leaving and haven't packed! I do have the suitcases out of the closet and on the floor but no clothes in them yet! When will I learn that procrastination is painful and stresses me out!? Never I suppose. Hope to get some packing done tomorrow morning since I'm off work! We'll see how that goes :)

Counting Down...

On September 26th I start a new adventure...working with Orphanage Outreach as the Health Corps Leader for the next 7 months. I'm excited, yet nervous at the same time to be leaving my job and my patients. I know once I arrive that I will once again immerse myself in the Dominican life and never look back but until then I have a few pre-travel jitters.

I hope to keep this blog updated, at least weekly if possible to post pictures and keep everyone posted on what is happening in my life, many miles away! Hopefully the electricity will cooperate and help me keep updated on my blog.

Until next week, let the packing begin and finishing up everything here in the states before I leave!