June 19, 2012
I want to start my blog entry about our trip to Ccotataqui, a
small mountain village outside of Pisac, at the end, with potatoes and cheese.
The potatoes were cooked on red-hot rocks, submerged under layers of earth
until cooked through and the cheese was homemade. Both were made like they have
been for generations in this region of Peru. Eaten together with a pinch of
salt, it was a delicious end to a day of clinic. This was the meal that our
hosts prepared us, as a thank you for the health care we brought them today.
From the perspective of someone whose world revolves around food, this gesture
of sharing traditional food was powerful, a gesture that I will always
remember.
During the course of our clinic today, we saw 133 patients
in Ccotataqui, from the very young to the very old. As is common in villages in
the mountains around the sacred valley of Peru, many of the patients spoke only
Quechua, so we enlisted the help of some of our friends from Pisac, as well a
few bi-lingual villagers, to help us throughout the day. As the line at intake
grew and our Quechua speakers were stretched thin translating for doctors, we
asked if any of the waiting patients spoke both Castellano (Spanish) and
Quechua. We made a deal with a young man about my age the he could cut the line
and be seen right away if he would come back after his check-up and help us
translate at intake. After he was seen, he and I teamed up to get basic
information on the patients waiting in line, expediting the process and
increasing our productivity for the day. When I was not helping at intake
today, I was seeing patients working with senior medical students and our
attending physicians. My memory of our first year curriculum was tested as I
took longer than I should have to remember that the gall bladder and liver are
indeed in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, but later redeemed myself by
giving the typical presentation of a patient with a duodenal ulcer. It was certainly
another busy day for our group, but the days we spend in rural villages are
always memorable adventures.
Dave Lingenfelter
MS2, Case Western Reserve University
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