Brazil Day 7: The Harvest

Today, Thursday, we were at a different village called Caracara (there are some accents in there somewhere I'm just not sure where). The original plan was to be at the original village all 3 days but because of the progress made we were able to help another village. Before our day started Pastor Alex shared from Matthew 9:35-38. "Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." Alex reminded us that Jesus did not build a mega-church and then ask everyone to come hear him preach, but rather he went out into the towns and villages and had compassion on the people. I am also always reminded from this passage that I need to pray for the church. I need to pray that there would be workers. These workers are ACTIVELY working toward the harvest. Jesus doesn't say to pray for the unsaved in this instance, He says to pray for the body of believers, the church, to work for the Kingdom. This is always a passage that challenges me to pray for my church and to pray for myself that I work hard toward the harvest.
We also took the opportunity to pray for Jeremy who represented the Bible Society on the boat. I pray for him and his family while he is away on these trips.
After that we were encouraged to go up to someone and say something that God has been teaching you. Janaina came up to me and said in her broke, but beautiful English, "God loves you and He will protect you." Her words rang in my mind the entire day. Today in particular I would hold many many babies and toddlers, many of which were on our boat because they had some type of skin issue. We saw a lot of scabies and parasites, but because of Janaina's reminder I was not afraid to touch and hold these precious babies. I was also reminded of Katie Davis's book "Kisses from Katie" where she cares for children all the time who have scabies and lice and she is unafraid to touch and love the children.
This town was more spread out along the river and we couldn't really see any houses from where we were docked. We docked by the church, school, and water supply. The church was built first and then built the school and a water system to create a central location. People road up on their boats from every direction to be seen. Today I discovered another role for myself as I would hold babies for mothers while they waited or while they were being seen  in order to give them a break (of course this was not a difficult task for me either). So between babies I would go down the waiting line and do blood pressures too and signal to the patients if they were good (giving the thumbs up) or if it was high by raising my hand. We learned that you don't do the okay sign with your hands because in Brazil that is like giving someone the middle finger. Of course we discovered how often we give the okay sign without thinking on this trip. It created many laughs and people were very understanding and would laugh with us when we slipped up.

We were excited about a new day and a new place.

We walked over to visit the school before we started on the boat.

This boy had his own taxi service where he would bring people to us.

The school

Our boat is the big white one. You can see the waiting area on the bottom deck and then the windows are where the doctors were.
This is where everyone "parked" their boats.

This was the "kids station" where dad did balloon animals, they cut hair, played games, painted nails, and painted faces.

They kept dad very busy!

Marcos took a break from cutting hair.

Face painting was popular.

While taking blood pressures, one lady’s was 246/118 so I walked her down to be seen. She was receiving methadopa for high blood pressure but this medication gave her side effects including drowsiness and tingling in her right arm so she had stopped taking it. Dr. Jim and Kevin P.A. both saw her and said that methadopa is not usually given for high blood pressure in the states. They gave her a month’s worth of beta-blockers with HCTZ but told her to follow up with her primary doctor. The most common issue that we saw with both remote villages was that they had been diagnosed with diabetes or hypertension, but the pharmacy did not have the medication that they needed or the supplies. We gave them temporary medications and education but the local follow up would probably be an issue.

Dr. Glynn also road out to someone's house on a boat in order to remove a lady's stitches. He also educated her about recovering. She had a hernia repair, but she had like 6 children so Glynn reminded her not to lift them. I haven't seen pictures from his house visit.

Ready to triage!

We loved our little patients! This is Amanda RN.

Dawn RN from the USA. We handed out Bibles to all the adults who came through.

I just thought this lady was super cute.

This cutie let me hold him too for a little while. His dimples pretty much melted my heart.

Isaias having some fun with some of our waiting patients. The lady wearing the clown glasses was the lady who had hypertention of 245/118 that I took down to Glynn.

I called this little guy my "chunk-a-munk" he was so adorable!

jump rope out in front of the church with the school kids.

Another one of my little friends that I got to hold for a while because his mother and siblings were being seen.

This was a 33 year old blind woman with her mother to the right. She came in because her "nails hurt and overall aches." Although we could not treat her for such benign and non-specific problems, we took the opportunity to love on her and her family. I took her blood pressure and then I let her listen with my stethoscope to her heart.

While there was a long line for the doctors Carlos drew pictures and taught that children need to have 4 different colors of vegetables on their plate.

This little one was fussing and just restless while her mom was sitting in line so I took her and walked around with her....she was perfectly content then. She just needed a change of scenery!

Dawn and I put our feet in the Amazon....that was as close as we were getting to swimming int it.

Dr. Glynn rode about 45 minutes down the river to a woman who needed her stitches removed.

Once again the doctors ended at about 7 after a long day with lots of patients seen. Over the 3 days the doctors saw about 500 patients. The nurses saw more than that because they sent patients away that had minor aliments that we could treat without them waiting for the doctors. The doctors were never rushed with the patients. They always took the time to make the patients feel cared for by giving them 100% of their attention. Dad also made about 1,000 balloons over those 3 days. I'm not sure how many people the dentists saw but they were also busy every day, all day.

After dinner we went into the church and had communion together as well as a time of sharing. Many people had a lot on their heart so a 20 minute communion turned into 2 hours of sharing and communion. I was encouraged to hear their experiences and testimonies and it was a blessing to take communion with them. Such a wonderful way to end 3 days of serving together.

Brazil Day 6: Rhythm

We jumped into our day with a rhythm set. Everyone took their positions and we saw more patients, but today seemed to be full of more interesting medical cases. The doctors saw a man who had experienced his 2nd stroke and almost called for a helicopter to fly him out. He had weakness on his entire one side to the point where he could not walk down to see the doctors and had to be carried. I did not hear the details of their decision but no helicopters were brought in.

We also had a baby who was very lethargic and who would open his eyes. He was 4 months old so we sent him down to be seen immediately by the doctors. I had the privilege of spending time with this mother and baby since I walked them down and waited with them. I sat in while Dr. Glynn examined the baby. All of his reflexes were intact including sucking, startle, and pupillary reaction to light. He also moved his eyes side-to-side. He reacted to pain, although his cry was weak. This poor baby just could not open his eyes all the way. The baby was an appropriate size for his age and did not look malnutritioned. Dr. Glynn thought that he may have botulism. He explained that there have been cases where botulism was found in dirt. He told the mother that it could take many months for this to clear up. I added that if his reflexes, like reaction to pain or sucking or following her with his eyes to take him to a hospital.

Everyone loved holding this sweet little boy.

The doctors also saw a man who sliced his hand with a machete. Dr. Glynn stitched his hand.

The triage team. Amanda RN, Rai, Julia RN, and Dawn RN.

Carlos and mom

During downtime Carlos was really good at reading to children are talking to them about proper nutrition.

Carlos's wife teaching about dental care

Dad moved to the bottom part of the boat where people were waiting to see the doctors to make balloon animals.

Check out this guy's belly....I'd say he had a major surgery.

Such beautiful little children! I couldn't get enough of them.

Dad up on deck later in the day...he had a line pretty much all day.

Acai berry juice. These berries are only found in the Amazon rainforest and have the highest concentration of antioxidants in the world. I could not acquire a taste for it though...not so yummy. If you see me or mom wearing beaded jewelry those are acai berries that were dyed.

Pam was blowing bubbles with the children. The little boy on the right was one of my little buddies. Something about his face just melted my heart. I played balloon sword fighting with him too.

Alexandro. Every time I turned around he would be standing beside me and just looking at me. I wondered if it was my funny English or if he had never seen a white American before. I called him spiderman all day. He also had some form of dwafism.

She hung out on the boat all day as well and made friends with all of us, but she especially liked Carla :)

I got to hold this gem after Amanda while her mother was being seen....talk about melt your heart!

Once we were finished triaging we went on a walk through part of the town.

"The Girls" as my aunt would say

on our walk through town we discovered a walled in soccer game going on with a bunch of men.

Mom, dad and I walked through town and found Cicero hanging out with these kids. We prayed with them before heading back to the boat.

We saw lots of patients today with back problems, GI issues, and lots of women with GYN problems. For some of the women with the GYN problems we had to educate them on what norms are. They had the HCG pregnancy test on board which we used for a few women who weren't sure if they were pregnant. For the men with back problems we had to decipher if it was from labor or kidney. They had a simple urinary analysis lab test that we had some of the patients do. We also had a few men that definitely had enlarged prostate. We were limited with how we could treat BPH so we did some teaching. One man though insisted that he see a doctor because he wanted a digital rectal exam. Kevin was lucky enough to receive him as a patient and Kevin refused to do the DRE because there was no way of treating it at this point. Although this man was insistent, and even argumentative, Kevin stood his ground on this one.

We noticed some kids climbing up a boat that was docked beside us. It was another story higher than ours and they were jumping and diving into the water off the top of the other boat. This made for some entertainment since we were finished triaging for the day.

Diego, Carla, and Isaias joined in on the fun.

The doctors finished late again tonight at about 7. We hung out on the deck of the boat and a few people went fishing off the dock. They caught this nasty piranha not too far from where those boys were swimming earlier.