Clinic in Chuchipaca

Manuel, Cecy and I had clinic today in Chuchipaca.  It was a smaller clinic than normal since there was a large clinic there last week.

We have an epileptic patient that usually comes to see us.  She is in a physically abusive marriage and her mother-in-law was one of her main support people but last week, she died.  She is really
struggling and her husband is drinking again. Some people just have a very difficult life.

We saw a new mother today with a baby that is 13 days old.  The baby has a large fontanel buldge. For whatever reason, they had not taken the baby to a hospital as advised.  As I was writting out a form for her to take, I offered to drive her but she told me that she wanted to wait until Monday or Wednesday. I just sighed and gave her a stern look...............I had done everything I could do. :(

After clinic, we went to visit a man who fell about 18 months ago when he was living in the United States. I visited him last year with Susan and he continues to struggle with chronic pain.  He lives where it is very difficult to get to the road and his family has dicouraged people from visiting him.  Again, another very sad situation.

As we left the clinic, I had mentioned that I wanted an apple.......well, about 1/2 a mile down the road was a truck full of apples and some kids sitting on the crates. I yelled, "Hey, will you toss me an apple?"  Well, they started tossing them 2 and 3 at a time into our truck!  I offered to pay for them but they were from the church and told me no.  I shared with Manuel and offered some to Cecy but she told me that she had trees full of them so I needed to keep these.

Among those that they had thrown, were these three that had grown together. I had never seen anything like it before but I had a set of triplets!

It is the weekend!  It will be full of activities and it will be good!