San Juan Ixcoy

Thursday was a challenging day in many respects. We were scheduled to do consultas and ultrasounds in San Juan Ixcoy (pronounced eesh-coy). First off, we all got up at 5 and met our drivers, Henry and Josue to make the 2 hour trip. Heading north from Huehuetenango you hit a very windy road with lots of switchbacks that takes you to the top of the altiplano (highlands), about 10,000 feet. We lost track of the potholes after the first thousand. After a brief stop for coffee, we got to San Juan Ixcoy around 9am.

We arrived at the "capacitación" which is the local clinic/mini hospital to find about 200 people waiting, and 50 or so hoping to have ultrasounds. There was a little disappointment when we said that 20-25 ultrasounds was probably all we could do but we got down to business fairly quickly and divided into teams. Melissa and Josh did consultas, while Chris, Rosalicia, and Mariah did a combination of consultas and ultrasounds. 

The patients themselves were lovely as usual. Most spoke Spanish, but some spoke Mam (pronounced "mom") and others Q'anjob'al (con-ho-ball). Of course our consultas were fairly limited without xray or labs (we could do urinalysis and pregnancy tests), but we had brought out own pharmacy thanks to the Providence pharmacy team and Debi Farr who supplied us with antibiotics and an assortment of other medicines. I suppose since we are doing shoutouts, we should say a huge THANK YOU to Sonosite for loaning us a very nice portable ultrasound machine that we brought with us.

We finished up around 4 but as our luck would have it, one of our pickups began to have some clutch problems on the road winding up and over the altiplano which slowed us down so we didn't get back until 7:30 or so to our host family. The night was spent preparing for a teaching session on Friday with medical students on obstetrical emergencies.