One of my patients....

So over the last few days we've really gotten into the swing of things running our clinic. We have visited several remote Andean villages, and when I say remote I mean that we are in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, and we have to drive 3 hrs across dirt roads and mountains to reach these people. They are isolated. Yesterday I was paired with a great pediatrician from the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Krishna, and she pretty much let us do everything (she was overlooking of course). We had the village's school come out so we could attend to children with problems ranging from night blindness due to Vit. A deficiencies to tumors. There was a poor 8 year old girl that had her ear pierced with a dirty needle and had not been able to see a doctor for it, and this happened about 8 months ago. Her ear and side of her face had become so badly infected that she will be permanently disfigured if we are fortunate enough to get the infection to go away. Her mother was even worse off as she had scraped her foot on a rock 5 years ago (yes, you read that correctly) and had as yet never seen a doctor for it. The infection had become gangrenous and had made it's way all the way down into her bone. We don't have a surgeon with us so all we can do is try to fight the infection and get her to an ortho ASAP and she will probably loose her foot. I actually have a picture of the wound but I'll spare you guys that one. Back to my work with Dr. Krishna, we were so overwhelmed with children that I, on my own, saw about 30 patients. Now I mentioned last summer that I thought I was having a hard time with the Spanish, well now there's a new little wrinkle here. Apparently in these remote villages very few people speak Spanish, much less English so we had to get a translator for Quechua to Spanish, then I do my best from there. Let's just say that it makes life interesting, especially seeing as I wouldn't get the chance to do what I'm doing here in the US for about 3 more years. Here is picture of one of my patients, these kids are great and are so thankful for our help. On a side note we're taking measurements of all the children's feet and with this information we are partnering with TOMS (a footwear company many of you probably have heard of) and will be bringing shoes for thousands of children next summer! Having a great time, and I hope you are as well reading this...