Day 10

June 13, 2012

After first arriving to Peru at the end of last week, all I could think of was, “wow I’m short of breath!” Yes, the altitude here is very high in certain regions, reaching 11,000 feet in Cusco. My resting pulse oximetry of 86% today proved it as well!  Before settling into our home base in the city of Urubamba, I made some brief stops in Lima, Cusco, and of course the world famous Machu Picchu. After 20 straight weeks of inpatient service as a resident back home in Cleveland, it was a refreshing break before starting work here in Peru.  It was also a great opportunity to become better acquainted with the culture and to get to know some of the terrific medical students, staff physicians, nurses, and other volunteers on the team whom I hadn’t met yet. Machu Picchu was awe-inspiring, blending a man-made architectural wonder with natural beauty like few other places in the world. I remember when I was back at Yale several years ago the controversy and dispute over Machu Picchu artifacts (suggest reading the history of Yale explorer Hiram Bingham’s discovery of Machu Picchu a century ago). At that time I could not completely grasp the strong desire to possess these artifacts, but now it all makes sense.

At Machu Picchu

Monday marked the beginning of week 2 of 4 of the Cleveland Clinic/Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Peru Health Outreach Project. My first day, our group of 3 adult and 3 pediatric docs and medical students saw 143 patients. Not quite the 273 patients they saw last Wednesday, but enough to keep us very busy. The following day we were in a rural village, but still saw close to 100 patients.  Today, we went to a school/orphanage, and thus primarily saw children (a total of 188). Though I’m an adult medicine doctor, I threw on my pediatric hat and saw some young kids. Most were simple well child checks, but if anything got out of my league, I had my cadre of outstanding pediatric docs next to me to refer to.  Treating kids is fun, especially when they discover that rubbing my bald head provides them a lifetime of luck . 

 

Vipan with the kids

 

Erica and Tim completing vision screenings

We come home in the evenings, and often spend time preparing for the following day. But despite the hard work, we are enjoying ourselves. Everything has been fun, whether it be seeing patients, playing soccer with the local kids, trying the Peruvian local food, sharing a local Pisco Sour with the local Peruvians, or just impromptu teaching sessions to the med students on the bus.  The team of medical students and staff has done a great job of organizing the trip, and I’m very thankful for all their hard work. It’s been less than 5 years that this project has been in existence, but the project is already beginning to operate like a well oiled machine.  This year, because of the increased number of volunteers from Cleveland Clinic and CWRU, we’ve decided to also send a group of us to a new community in Chincha (approx 1hr from Lima), and I’ll be heading there this weekend after a couple of more days here.  Stay tuned for some updates from there.

Vipan Nikore MD, MBA

PGY-2, Cleveland Clinic Internal Medicine Residency Program