I don't know how I forgot about the lizard that was in church during the funeral on Sunday but it slipped my mind the other day when I was writing. The lizard can't be left out though... It was only a small lizard, probably 3 inches long. One of the deacons who was sitting in front of the church was suddenly trying to get something off of his suit coat sleeve. This small lizard was flung onto the floor- not much later someone got up and flicked this lizard off of the pant leg of the man who was speaking. After his second descent to the floor the lizard crawled off toward the benches of men amd he wasn't seen again. I really wonder if he had decided to crawl toward the benches of women what would have happened... I don't know if a Haitian woman would squeal if they were surprised by a lizard or not. I wonder...
Yesterday at the clinic I saw a woman whose complaint was that there was something in her stomach that hurt. It looked like she would be past child bearing age but she isn't sure how old she really is. I had her get up on the exam table so we could take a look. She definitely has some kind of abdominal mass, or more than one. It seemed like there were 3 different masses, possibly connected but we couldn't tell for sure. She said the mass had been there " a long time" but I never did understand if that meant weeks or months. Jay was there at the clinic so I asked him if he wanted to do an ultrasound- yes, for interests sake- only the lady needed to understand that she needed to go down to a hospital for further testing. We would not be able to identify exactly what this mass was. Out of curiosity he measured the largest mass- 10cm x 7cm! We told the lady multiple times that this mass was not normal and she needed to get further testing done and suggested which hospital she should try to go to. Hopefully she will go soon, and hopefully it isn't too late for treatment.
Today I saw a little 5 year old boy who had a very bad case of infected scabies. He had sores that were filled with pus and mutiple places where the sores were open and bleeding. He needs to be treated for the scabies but before we can do that we need to get rid of the open wounds and the infection. I gave him Bactrim for the infection, calamine lotion for his itchy skin, Tylenol, etc... and a tube of permetherin cream to treat the scabies after his sores are healed. Hopefully he will feel better in a day or two.
Another patient I saw today was 19 years old. He came in with a scarf wrapped around his neck. He has a huge abscess on his cheek and neck, probably from an infected tooth. He said he had had this for "a long time" also. It was obvious it had been a while because the abscess had started to open on it's own, way down under his jaw bone there was an opening that was oozing pus. I drained a little bit of nasty fluid but most of the area around it was very firm, not like an abscess that is ready to be drained so I gave him antibiotics for a week amd told him to come back for us to look at it again when the antibiotics are finished.
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