tecate
just got back from Tecate. A little border town 55 miles in from San Diego. Some UCLA latino union undergrad students set up a clinic there every 3 months. They get some family med folks from Harbor-UCLA to roll. I rolled this time. A 6 am until 9 pm day. but pretty fun, eating breakfast with folks on the way there and stopping at a mexico taco stand on the way back. (a side note. we noticed everything in the taco stand was coca-cola. red coca-cola chairs and tables and the awning and they only sold coca-cola products and the doc we were with said that coke comes out all through mexico with these and gives the little taco stands fridges and tables and chairs as long as they only sell coke. so thats how they get their product everywhere...)
of course i only ate cheese quesidillas since there aint nothing for no veggies down there really.
when we got to the clinic there was this guy in a beat up pick up truck with megaphones announcing we were coming. there were all these women and children lining up. young women with their kids. hardly any men.
the UCLA students brought clothes and rice and beans and the Harbor pharmacist have stockpiled all these meds that she brought.
it was fun. seeing kids. and their moms. real easy medicine with shitty social factors which makes it hard medicine. improvise everything. this guy's blood sugar was through the roof and the medication that i wanted to give him usually needs follow up on liver tests. i was gonna just tell him if he gets yellow go see a doc but is that responsible? but what else can you do?
they need the so called wrap around medicine where you have to cover transportation cost and food cost and so much other stuff in order to make medical treatments effective and work.
this day reminded me of the tibetan refugee camp in karnataka where i was sitting as a med student with nuns and scared and not really knowing if i was doing anything useful for them. me and ani dichen(the head nun of the clinic who had such a dope vibe about her who was around my age...) and ani dichen would bring the nuns in one at a time and they would be so so shy. i was often the first guy who have ever touched them in their life. you got to see some brilliant smiles and giggles and I knew I would never be let into their private woman nun world(which i guess is rather obvious) but just from some of their smiles you could tell they were so cool and you would like to get to know them better but never would.
anyway, i felt a spleen on a nun back then and i didn't know what to do. What does that mean? feeling a spleen. i knew it wasn't good but not much else.
now i know. i know how to work it up and what the serious stuff of a palpable spleen is. and i now how to try to figure out what is causing it. in the United States.
the sad thing is it probably doesn't matter in parts of Mexico or India. if i had known in india it probably wouldn't have made that much difference.
learned so much in a couple years. but its still the access, stupid. that gets the patient every time.
at the AIDS conf in toronto this past week heard alot of stuff about people trying to draw up a blueprint for universal access for HIV meds. past the rhetoric. everybody from your mama to big pharma says thats a goal. but some folks are talking about ways to get there. gotta learn more about that.
sri
of course i only ate cheese quesidillas since there aint nothing for no veggies down there really.
when we got to the clinic there was this guy in a beat up pick up truck with megaphones announcing we were coming. there were all these women and children lining up. young women with their kids. hardly any men.
the UCLA students brought clothes and rice and beans and the Harbor pharmacist have stockpiled all these meds that she brought.
it was fun. seeing kids. and their moms. real easy medicine with shitty social factors which makes it hard medicine. improvise everything. this guy's blood sugar was through the roof and the medication that i wanted to give him usually needs follow up on liver tests. i was gonna just tell him if he gets yellow go see a doc but is that responsible? but what else can you do?
they need the so called wrap around medicine where you have to cover transportation cost and food cost and so much other stuff in order to make medical treatments effective and work.
this day reminded me of the tibetan refugee camp in karnataka where i was sitting as a med student with nuns and scared and not really knowing if i was doing anything useful for them. me and ani dichen(the head nun of the clinic who had such a dope vibe about her who was around my age...) and ani dichen would bring the nuns in one at a time and they would be so so shy. i was often the first guy who have ever touched them in their life. you got to see some brilliant smiles and giggles and I knew I would never be let into their private woman nun world(which i guess is rather obvious) but just from some of their smiles you could tell they were so cool and you would like to get to know them better but never would.
anyway, i felt a spleen on a nun back then and i didn't know what to do. What does that mean? feeling a spleen. i knew it wasn't good but not much else.
now i know. i know how to work it up and what the serious stuff of a palpable spleen is. and i now how to try to figure out what is causing it. in the United States.
the sad thing is it probably doesn't matter in parts of Mexico or India. if i had known in india it probably wouldn't have made that much difference.
learned so much in a couple years. but its still the access, stupid. that gets the patient every time.
at the AIDS conf in toronto this past week heard alot of stuff about people trying to draw up a blueprint for universal access for HIV meds. past the rhetoric. everybody from your mama to big pharma says thats a goal. but some folks are talking about ways to get there. gotta learn more about that.
sri
posted by srijeeva at 9:12 PM
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