Romania: Day 7

Day 7, Thursday, May 11, 2017

The church where the clinic was held. Team devotions.

The pastor reading through the New Testament in Romanian with the patients who came to the clinic while they waited to see the doctor. 

The second to last day of our clinics was held at a small church in a village. Many of the neighbors came to be seen by the “American doctors.” A few were super curious and did not have particular medical complaints. Many of the patients with which I interacted made an impression on me. The elderly Romanians lived through communism, hardness, likely starvation and challenges, but they continued to have a sweet spirit and were incredibly grateful we were there to love them. One gal kept stroking my hands as I talked to her – she took a picture with Jasmine, our interpreter, and me before leaving. 

Thee sweet gal who was so grateful we were in her village for a clinic

Half the battle with doing medicine in another country is figuring out what medications they are on. This is challenging enough when one speaks the same language, but even more so when one doesn’t. To add insult to injury, so to speak, many of the drugs go by a different name, so I relied on my pharmacology study of drug class (families) and function to figure out what diseases each patient may have. Although I don’t know the actual statistic, I kept joking with my students that 80% of medical complaints can be linked to medications. Our pharmacist, Josh, was incredibly helpful in solving the drug puzzle over and over during the day.

Josh's medication supply arranged according to color

Medication list in Romanian

Another elderly gentleman came in with vitiligo and wanted to know if we could cure it. He later confessed that he was incredibly curious and just wanted to meet us. Who knows how long he waited to see us, but after a few minutes, he nervously left with smiles and kissing our hands to show his appreciation of us coming to his village.

Our lunch was a delicious, yet incredibly messy, lunch of shawarmas. The village where we were working is near Bulgaria. Much of the cuisine in the region is of Turkish origin as we found out throughout the week of lunches.

Eating shawarmas for lunch

The last patient of the day was a gentleman there for leg pain. After a series of questions, I was much more suspicious for heart failure than any other source of leg pain. On exam, he had a noticeable heart murmur and bilateral lower lobe crackles, which were also consistent with this diagnosis. If he had been a few minutes later checking in to see us, we would not have had him as a patient that day and he might have missed an important diagnosis. We had him come back the next day with his medications to see if we could add anything else in to help with symptoms and educated him on when to seek hospital care. He will also follow up with his main doctor to discuss these symptoms.

This particular clinic emphasized creativity with clinic structure, spacing, and interaction among the team members. At one point, Rob was pulling teeth in the passageway between the main sanctuary, bathroom, and dental area due to space constraints. I love how the situation does not have to be perfect to be used by God to make a difference in a person’s life. Just as Jesus made do with a small lunch of fish and bread, we work with what is available and God uses it for his glory. Not only is this true of physical spaces, but it is also true of giving our lives to his work. We may not think we have much talent, skill, or knowledge to offer, but God uses our willingness to make a difference.

Dentist Rob pulling a tooth in the hallway.

When we returned from clinic, I crashed for a 20-30 minute power nap before dinner. We had debrief time after dinner and finished early in order to enjoy pool time. Nearly our entire team headed down to the salty pool and then hit up the wet and dry saunas before it closed at 10 PM. Fun team bonding!

The hotel pool