San José las Flores, Thursday 18 de Octubre

You will not find San José las Flores on any tourist map. Or any printed map for that matter. OK, you can find it on Google maps if you know where to look, but it doesn't know how to get there by any road. It is a small aldea (village) along a winding dirt road that takes about 2 1/2 hours from Huehue. The road is often surrounded by tall hills as you wind along through the foggy altiplano. There is a Puesto de Salud (health post) with almost nothing inside, that is usually not staffed by nurses and almost never by physicians.

Over the last 2 weeks the places we have gone (Casa Materna, Santa Eulalia, San Juan Ixcoy) were determined by communication between the PCI (Project Concern International) leader in Huehue and the various communities she is in touch with. At some point, there was a decision to have us make a trip there.






We left Huehue at 5am with our drivers and headed up the windy road to the mirador, then headed east along the dirt road where our average speed was about 8 mph. Once we arrived, we had a small breakfast in a restaurant with a wood fire then headed to the Puesto de Salud.

As with previous clinics we had done, we brought our ultrasound, our medicine supply from Providence, our basic instruments (otoscope, stethoscope, flashlight), and set to work. The Guatemalan system is usually that people are given a number, then form a line and are seen in numeric order. The problem with this system is that usually the person with the number is with other family who have medical questions as well. Fortunately, the people in San José speak Spanish making less of a language barrier.

Josh diagnosed dementia in an 80yo man whose son brought him and had never heard of dementia before. Melissa had a many pediatric visits. Mariah and Rosapicante (yes, she does have a name) split their time between ultrasounds and consults. They were doing so well with ultrasounds that Chris left them and did mostly adult consults. One woman came in as a victim of domestic violence.



At the end of the day, we left many of our supplies with the puesto. One of the nursing aides was touched to the point of crying that we had brought much needed supplies. San José las Flores is a lovely remote town with very poor access to health care. The need and the appreciation of the people we met were both powerful and stirring. 





We drove back along the road to Huehue and arrived around 7 to have our last dinner with Abesaida, Arnoldo, and Paty. We had bought our bus tickets already and did our final packing for the trip home.