When I worked in the States, I often felt like my patient's ailments would follow a theme from week to week. One week everyone had COPD, the next week the floor was full of patients with GI bleeds. This phenomenon followed me to Haiti, and it often seems as though many of our patients come in with the same problem on any given day. One week it is hypertension, pregnant teenagers the next week, heartburn the week after that.
Apparently this is our week for little ones with pneumonia. Our benches have been crowded with worried mamas and babies with horrible, hacking coughs. (I much prefer the weeks where everyone has heartburn.) Yesterday the clinic felt like a revolving door of nebulizer treatments and antibiotics. By the time they got to us these babies were exhausted by the effort of breathing, most of them too tired to even fight the breathing treatment mask. Along with antibiotics and albuterol, we gave out follow up appointments to make sure the children were improving.
One of those follow up appointments absolutely made my Tuesday morning. Yesterday Michard was lethargic and weak, with that scary, droopy look that toddlers get when they are sick. This morning in clinic we were greeted by a bouncy two and a half year old, racing up and down the concrete path, grinning, playing and giving her aunt fits. Her lungs were clearing, as was her cough. Today I am even more thankful for the grace of modern medicine.
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