No Holiday

Sep 23/2010 – Llano Rico – Colombia

When I go back to my regular job in Canada, and when I have a really busy day and feel tempted to complain about workload, I will remember this day: Sep 21-2010, Llano Rico, Colombia. And then I will think: “Work? What work? This is a holyday!”

We got here on Monday, coming from Balsita, that is, down the mountain driving in a one-lane gravel road, after a whole night of heavy rainfall. I had my doubts we would make it through the road. There were several landslides partially blocking the road.

Our first stop was a very large tree that had fallen on the road. We all got out of the car and the drivers managed to get the cars through the bush on the side of the road (God bless Toyota Land cruisers). Then a man on a bike stopped our car to tell us that there was no way through. Great… We went to check it out and found a landslide and a river that had just about washed the whole road forming a little waterfall as it went down the other side of the road into the cliff.  Now what… We all got out of the car again. This obstacle was harder than the big tree, the water was fast and the rocks loose. We tried to even out the rocks, some using their feet others with the 2 shovels we had. The car tried to make it through, slid a bit towards the cliff, then got stuck on the rocks. Out with the shovels again, I started to pray. Second try… and we got through. Phew.

Arriving in Llano Rico the people started to follow our car as soon as they saw it. Before we had turned off the engine or gotten out of the car, there was already a lineup of people by the clinic. The clinic is an abandoned and partially destroyed health center recently renovated and recovered by MSF. Before renos there were only moldy walls with no roof. Now the roof is completed and this was the first time we saw it after the painting was done. There is still no running water or electricity, but things are coming along and we had a generator.

We started consults as soon as we organized ourselves and oh my god…  I thought we would never stop. We worked like crazy all day on our first day and on the second day, our poor doctor didn’t even stop to eat. Things started well with a very sick pregnant woman that vomited on our triage floor first thing in the morning and the rest of the people followed the rhythm and kept us insanely busy all day long. By 7pm when 3 victims of a motorbike accident arrived (one light chest trauma, a little girl with an injured knee that required stitches and an elderly woman visibly upset but thank goodness physically well) I lost hope of ever going to sleep that day. There comes a point when you just accept it that you will work till you drop and just keep on moving like a dead zombie.  You name it, we had it: burn victims, the motorbike accident, really sick pregnant women (besides the vomiting one), loads of sick children (with high temperatures) and lots of malaria. To give you an idea of the situation, we ran out of gauze, and we carry A LOT of gauze.  By 9pm when we finally saw the last patient out the door and organized our things for the next day, I was waiting for a woman in labor to come in, because really, that was all that was missing. Thankfully, God decided we deserved some rest and nobody decided to have a baby that night.

People started to arrive by 0530 the next morning. One angry father made his thoughts known saying something like “ How come this people sleep while the children are dying. They send you here to work and that’s what you should do.” Well, we were all too tired to argue with him that thank God, at the moment nobody was dying and that his baby had been seen by us the day before and already given treatment. That was the most frustrating thing… to work so hard and to feel like the people don’t recognize it and only expect more. Well, maybe I would be just the same if I were in their shoes without health care for long periods of time.

We couldn’t see all of the people that came to us, which always makes me worried, but I have to realize that we simply cannot take care of all the sick people in this world. We did our best and we saw the sickest of them. The rest I can only recommend to God and feel reassured that we will be going back there soon.