I haven’t figured out why, but for some reason the clinic I
volunteer at is called Korea. I’ve volunteered at hospital, nursing homes and
other clinical settings before, but Korea is a completely different experience.
Most hospitals I’ve seen before are bright, white, and so many precautions and
procedures that have to be followed carefully. Even in the most basic clinic,
there are machines everywhere that beep, and have a million alarms and flashing
lights. Korea isn’t like that at all. It’s basically a concrete block with
windows (and thank God for those, because there is no AC). The only light the
clinic has is natural light, but since Korea is next to other buildings, it’s
generally a very dark place. The massive machines I’m used to seeing in the US
(even in the simplest clinic) don’t exist here. There are no beeps, or alarms,
or flashing lights, just the sounds of the people talking in the waiting room
(the walls are incredibly easy to hear through, so privacy is pretty hard to
come by).
The medical
tools that they do have in the clinics are very limited, so if you need an
x-ray, or a blood/urine/stool test, or basically any test at all, the doctor
has to write you a referral to the Second Level of medical care. Even then, the
technology isn’t the best. For example, almost every doctor’s office in the US
use digital x-rays. It wasn’t until I started volunteering in Korea that I saw
an actual x-ray film.
I don’t think I realized how ill equipped
Korea was until today. The stethoscopes barely work, and clinics are noisy, so
it’s nearly impossible to listen to someone’s heartbeats (especially if it’s a
fetal heartbeat). If you want to take someone’s blood pressure, they don’t even
use the stethoscope, because it’s easier to feel the pulse manually than to
listen for it through a stethoscope. And (obviously) the blood pressure cuff is
manual too. Temperature is taken with a mercury thermometer, rather than the
fancy electronic ones we have. They use the most basic tool they can that will
still get the job done.
This is
fine and all, but I really want to share with you all what I saw today, because
it was extremely eye opening, and I think it will help you understand how
little this clinic has. So today we had a patient who needed a Pap smear done
(Pap Smears are basically where they use this device called a speculum to open
the vagina, and then collect some cells to screen for things like cancer). So
the doctor was about to do the procedure, when she realized that there wasn’t
enough light in order to see (it was a cloudy day outside). The clinic didn’t
have a flashlight, or any type of light, for that matter, so the doctor as
anyone if they had a phone on them. The CNA handed over her go-phone, and the
doctor turned on this dim LED light. She then handed me the phone, and told me
to hold it over the patient while the doctor did the procedure. I was so
shocked that they had to resort to using a phone in order to see well enough to
do a Pap smear. I don’t know about you, but I would have been so uncomfortable
if I had been the patient on the table today. Pap Smears are invasive enough,
and on top of that you have some random person’s phone right next to you’re
privates. Eeeek. And on top of that, it was still nearly impossible to see
anything. Fortunately, I told ISA about this, and they’re going to donate a
flashlight to the clinics.
In
completely unrelated news, I had a fantastic weekend. Catherine, Nathania, and
I went on an overnight trip to some of the beaches to the north of us. We took
a guagua (a small bus) up to a city called Puerto Plata, and from there we took
a van-sized concho to the town of Caberete, which was about 30 minutes east of
Puerto Plata. The mega-concho was definitely an experience. The guy who was
sitting in front of Catherine had a live chicken in a plastic bag in his lap.
The chicken actually freaked out mid-trip, and started clucking and flapping
it’s wings, while there were probably 18 people stuffed into this concho. It
was definitely an interesting experience. Once we finally got to Caberete, we
checked into our hotel, and headed to the beach, which was absolutely
beautiful, and was lined with different bars and hotels.
We laid on
the beach for a few hours, and left around 5 to go back to our hotel.
Apparently, laying out on the beach was exhausting, because once we got back to
the hotel, we ended up crashing, and we slept until 10 PM. When we woke up, we
got ready to go out, and headed back to the beach around 12 or so. The first
thing we did was grab some food. The only place that was still open was called The
Lazy Dog Grill, which served “American”
food. I ordered a hamburger and fries, and I was surprised at how off it
tasted. The bun was basically regular bread, the actually meat tasted like
sausage, and the fries just didn’t taste like fries. But it was definitely
interesting seeing their take on American food.
After that,
we walked along the beach to check out the nightlife. Caberete is a very
touristy place, so there were way too many drunken American midlifers. There
was this one 50 year old was belligerently drunk who tried to talk to us. He
was screaming things like “How did you guys get here to the DR? I got here on a
boat! It was AWFUL because they made us eat f***ing SANDWICHES!” and “What,
you’re ignoring me?? Is that what you’re going to do? Show up and just IGNORE
PEOPLE? Because I will NOT be ignored!” It was interesting, to say the least.
The
Saturday morning we headed over to a beach in Sosua, which was about 15 minutes
west of Caberete. Sosua is absolutely gorgeous. You can see the mountains in
the background, and there are no shells or trash on the beach. The water was
absolutely clear, and when we swam in the water we could see some small fish
swimming by our feet. After we were done swimming, we laid out in the sun some
more, drank some Piña Coladas, and then finally headed back to Santiago. This
weekend was so much fun, but I’m really looking forward to this upcoming
weekend too. The entire group is headed to the capital, Santo Domingo, and I’m
super excited for it! I’ll keep you guys updated!
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| Playa Sosua |
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