With an excited ripple of expectation we boarded our transport to Trece. The familiar face of our driver and the presence too of Neil and Ambo from BL, heightened our excitement for what the day will bring. As we swung into the familiar traffic jam that clogs Manila, a sense of déjà vu hit me, wondering if we would again crawl for the first 2 hours only to cover just 2 km of our journey! But praise God, our decision to stay in Makati has saved us those 2 hours!!
Upon arrival at the Southville Trece basketball court, we were all amazed to see that the court had been upgraded with bench seats and fenced thus enclosing it to resemble a humungous cage!!
Walking to the BL building through the village, I was greeted happily by the locals who thanked us for coming (again). A local shopkeeper whom Kim had helped last year, told me her teeth were feeling great still.
Our team has been bolstered by Dr Beth from Nebraska, (kind of filling in for Dr Leo who will join us sometime tomorrow afternoon); Christine, a nurse from Chicago, and Melanie from Vancouver. Again our Lord has provided us well.
It feels like we have never been away, so smoothly did we all swing into action from the setup to the finish!
I loved reconnecting with my translator Chardaina , a scholar with BL who is studying hard to realise her dream of becoming a doctor. I asked her to contribute to this blog…
“Today is a smoother flow of work that I’m more aware of what I am doing being in the pharmacy and what is fun the most is that I learn a lot by just listening in the conversations if the doctors and the whole Australian team including the other guys ?”
Again God is using us to show His love and mercy. Dr Betty has examined and intervened in cases involving a huge abscess with cellulitis where the local hospital had told the patient to come back on Wed ( apparently according to Dr Betty, he could be dead by then if it wasn’t drained immediately to start with); tuberculosis , where again the patient was deemed non urgent by an overwhelmed local TB treatment centre in spite of coughing up 2 cups of blood daily.
So great is the need here that we smashed the record for dental patients in our first clinical half day session where the team treated 35 patients in just over 4 hours.
The medicos got through 47 patients in just under 5 hours, meaning pharmacy served at least 75 patients in the same time frame!
I’m reminded of a verse that I saw on the back windscreen of a car today as we were travelling to Trece…
“Nothing is impossible with God”
(Luke 1:37)
Carrie