A few days ago, eight young Portuguese doctors arrived here at Laura Vicuña to volunteer for three weeks providing basic medical consults for all our girls and all of the children in our adopt-a-child program.
Since I’m on school break, I’ve gotten to spend a few days helping them out and it’s been really fun for me to observe some medicine again and see what they can do here.
The first day, a little girl who is our closest neighbor here was brought in by her slightly older sister with terribly burned feet. Only 2 or 3 years years old, she had been toddling around outside when she stuck her feet in her mothers cooking fire. One of the doctors asked me to help him hold her down, and watch how he bandaged her feet so that I could do it for her if she came back for new bandages after the doctors go back to Portugal. I was amazed at the little girl’s bravery! She did not cry at all until the very end as the doctor cut all the skin around her burn and put on cream and wrapped up the horrible-looking feet.
Another day, I asked the doctors if they would be willing to take a look at one of my students who has had chest pains for several years. One doctor here had told him it was asthma, and another a heart murmur, but his family doesn’t have the money he would need to buy a nebuilizer for asthma or to have a surgery for a heart murmur. My student, Lolo, arrived with his father, and they both were very nervous to see the doctors. But after a thorough examination – the doctors found nothing wrong! They asked him some other questions about stress in his life and were able to reasonable assume that his chest pain stems from stress and nervousness! As Lolo walked out of the makeshift doctor’s office, he looked so relieved. Neither of the two conditions he worried he might have existed, and the docs had given him some pills (in reality vitamins, hoping for a placebo effect) for him to take when he feels the pain to calm him down. Lolo was so grateful – it made the doctors’ whole trip worthwhile for me.
On another day, I followed one of the doctors around and just observed and helped with little things as she gave physicals. One of her basic questions to all the kids was, “Do you have any problems with your eyes or vision?” Usually the answer was no, but with one girl she answered yes and told us that she has a hard time seeing distances. She said all the teacher’s writing at school just looks like big white blobs on the blackboard. We felt terrible – there’s nothing we can do for her, and there’s no opthamalogist for her to go to anywhere except the capital city, and that she wouldn’t be able to afford. Mostly out of curiosity, I took off my own glasses and tried them on her face. I asked her what it looked like and her response was just a giggle, “Well, the world looks clearer.”
I don’t really think too much about medicine here. I know that when I go home, I’ll be going to medical school, but here I’m a teacher, a big sister, lots of things, but not in any way related to health. These days have been really good for me. It’s been nice to be reminded of what I want to do – to see how much good these people could do in a short time, and to remember that indeed this is the type of work I want to do, too, someday. How frustrating to be unable to help some people – to not know how to test vision and measure for glasses – and yet how wonderful to let another young man know he’s healthy and just needs to relax, or to keep a little girl from having scarred, deformed feet. I was very lucky to have this time to see and observe these things and it gave me a renewed sense of direction on what I will do when my time in Mozambique is over.
