Forth day!

     We started early to go to the Indian reservations on the border with Panama and visit the patients of the Palliative Care over there.  We took the Carretera Panamericana for three and a half hours before we left it and turned to a rough unpaved road suitable just for a 4x4.

     We lost count of how many times we had to stop at difficult passages of that road (trail would be a better description, maybe) to ponder about the best strategy not to get stuck.  Only after an extra very-shaky one-and-a-half hour have we started seeing the first pueblos, mostly with just a couple of houses each.  

     Then, the routine became familiar again: "Do you know M. Santos?  Do you know where he lives now?" The nurse Angelita has to ask these questions in almost all of their visits, because many of the families move without communicating it to them.  But certainly, they always take all efforts to make sure every kid gets checked once in a while.

   Those questions were again asked to multiple people before we finally reached a wooden house with the expected abuelos and their numerous kids and grandchildren  in the house.

     What was completely unexpected, however, was to find on the lap of the gradma a very healthy looking baby with a tracheostomy and a pediatric colostomy bag on his side.  He was born with cardio-respiratory and intestinal malformations but was doing amazingly well, specially on the conditions he was living in.   By then we had started to get used to not being surprised with how caring these families can be with their special kids and how that care could revert into better living conditions to them.

     All the families we visited had to walk for hours to attend a doctor's appointment, and they had to leave home very early in the morning for that.  The nurses and doctors going to them instead truly made a difference, and enables he parents and grandparents to save the trip to the city just for special occasions (undergo more complicated procedures, for example) and still feel cared for.

    Well, that was the first visit of the day, we still had a couple more kids to visit before heading back!

Kisses, 

Mariana

Something familar to the Indian community!