Oficina

And now has begun the time of working in the office. 

We are back to cooking all our meals, which ordinarily I would love (and I do, don't let me mislead you.) 

Below you will find a not very good quality picture of my bowl of lentils, rice, spinach, tomatoes, red bell peppers, a little oregano, ahi powder, S&P that I cranked out Monday night. 

The only difficulties arise when the 4 interns plus the anywhere between 3 and 11 other staff members in the office are all crammed into the kitchen trying to cook lunch around our 12 o clock lunch break. I took the liberty of creating lunch "shifts" yesterday. AKA I jumped in the kitchen at 11:40 to get my lunch cooked so I could be out of the way when the crowd hit. Which it did. 

I like my space in the kitchen. 

Miraculously, it is still working out for us to all be sharing one refrigerator for (all) the interns' food plus all the food the staff stores here for their lunches and snacks. 

Reminder to self: I am thankful for...

the roof over my head

a warm bed at night

fruits and veggies being inexpensive here

morning runs spent chatting with God

ALSO, how cool is my job-

Tuesday, I sat in on a meeting with MEDLIFE's head of medical staff, head of Peruvian staff, patient follow up coordinator, founder of MEDLIFE, and a few other people. Halfway through I found myself signed up for going along on a patient doctor's appointment. Her visit yesterday was to the gynecologist. I went with the patient follow up coordinator to a local women's cancer clinic. We arrived at 2:30. The patient arrived around 2:50. We saw the doctor around 3:50. I went in with the patient and we were with the doctor for approximately 7 minutes. He told her she needed an ultrasound (ecografia, en Español) and she was scheduled for an appointment on Thursday (9AM ultrasound, 3PM consultation)

For someone who lives around a 30 minute bus ride away and needs to work during the day, this is a huge commitment to have 3 doctor's appointments in one week. 

She had already been sent from doctor to doctor, accruing consultation and lab test costs each time. MEDLIFE was splitting most of the payments with her, but it was still a lot of money, not to mention frustration.

This trip showed me one thing especially- how helpful it was to have a MEDLIFE representative with this woman on her visit. Often times, patients are so unfamiliar with the health care system here that they are almost incapable of organizing their own appointments and telling the doctors everything that is important for them to know.

Someone told me that the average "medical" literacy of Americans is around an 8th grade level, and if you speak to them with vocabulary above the 8th grade level, they can't understand. Imagine this same situation but exacerbated due to our patients' severely low levels of medical knowledge, and even general literacy for that matter. 

Nick Ellis, founder of MEDLIFE, explained to me that accompanying patients to their visits is a way that MEDLIFE facilitates patient care and follow up, rather than providing all of it ourselves, which we cannot do.

On this trip, I also got to talk to Mery (our patient follow up coordinator) about SIS, the health insurance for impoverished citizens. I had already heard that the institution visits the applicant's house to check their socio-economic status, but Mery told me more in detail what that involves. 

She said that beyond just checking if the applicant has a refrigerator, television, or other household electronics, they also simply observe them to see if they can read or write, counting these skills towards being higher up on the social ladder. If they have a cell phone, a toilet, possibly electricity, forget it. No SIS. This system may not sound all bad. It seems logical that if someone can afford a cell phone and electricity maybe the gov't shouldn't be paying for their health care. 

BUT the system of tabulating their "wealth" is severely skewed and subjective. 

It was an eye opening experience and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to go.

And as one last update: I think I have poison ivy all over my neck and cheeks. Story of my life.