Our pediatricina and her family
The pediatrician. Jerrilyn, spent last week in Guate working with the people to improve their health. We are so grateful to her and her family for all they do. They saw many people and lots of babies, preschoolers and older children. We had them do check ups for an orphanage of 20 children. Here is her intitial report.
"we are just getting home so I will try to write a longer note tomorrow.
We saw the twins who generally looked really healthy. The girl Lillian said had colic-she cries a lot. Her stools are really watery-just soaks into the diaper and that is likely a sign she is having trouble digesting the formula. We gave her several cans of soy formula. When you are an infant your intestines aren't mature and so you absorb the proteins whole without breaking them down as you grow this changes so many infants grow out of milk intolerances. I told her to save the formula she had and she would likely be able to go back to that. Nobody really uses the term colic anymore. The thinking is that if babies are that fussy there must be a reason and while they do grow out of it you should try to find the reason. I hope she is doing better.
We saw a woman Marta Martin who had the complaint of fatigue. She had a really loud heart murmur 3-4/6. She had never seen a doctor so we don't know if this is new, getting louder or not. She should get an ECHO to see if her heart is structurally normal. In talking to people it sounds like they don't have that equipment in Solala but she would need to go to a larger city. I don't think an ECG would give her the information she needs. You don't know until you know what is wrong how to treat her.
Quickly some good things-many of the children looked better. Their heart rates overall were lower and that is a sign their anemia is improving and so the vitamins are helping. We brought some more for Dominga. Also Dominga knows Marta Martin and a bit about what is going on.
We bought textbooks for Gil for grades k-6. He was really happy for them.
We saw several babies back who had basically been starving eating just 6-8 oz of formula a day and often mixing the formula incorrectly. We had given them formula and showed them how to make the formula. The babies who came back were all doing well and their mom's were proud to show them to us who were now eating 24-30 oz a day and thriving.
The Sandbergs said the cleft palate baby is also doing much better now that they are mixing the formula correctly. He is growing and set to have surgery next month.
I'll give you a more detailed note later.
We saw close to 300 people in Pana. The branch president stayed most of the day with us and said he knew about half the people. Lots of people suffering. It didn't seem that many we saw had more resources than the others.
We also did incaparina and milk."
I have been vacationing with my family. we had arranged months ago to visit our oldest daughter and her husband and four kids in Rochester, MN. When all the mudslides hit with Agatha, we thought about changing our plans and flying down. We have a scheduled trip in Aug to go to Guate. I had very competent volunteers down there to handle everything. Plus Ryan, my sil, just finished his first year of residency at the Mayo and this was the only time he had free to visit with us. So we kept to our original plans. It has been a little harder to send blogs and emails, but not impossible. We start home today and will sepnd the next two nights on the road. It is 17 hours of being in the car driving between here and there. We have our 6 youngest with us, so we only try and do 6 or 7 hours a day. Plus we have visited Kirtland, OH and Nauvoo, IL. We visited the Mississippi and an Eagles rescue center. Have had much fun.
Vicki
Director of http://www.safehomesforchildren.org
where 100% of your donation goes to our projects not into our pockets
Pictures
the cleft palate baby she was talking about
the grandkids we are visiting
the baby of this family
our pediatrician and her family
some of the people helped at the clinics.
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