![\"Guatemala](\"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/2015\/12\/Guatemala-047-e1450485377862.jpg\")
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Today we headed to the outskirts of Chichicastenango, about a 45 minute drive from our place.\u00a0 Chichicastenango is a Mayan dominated small village which proudly proclaims itself as the \u201cmecca of tourism\u201d.\u00a0 This is somewhat of an overstatement, however they do receive a large number of tourists on Thursdays and Sundays for some of the most famous and colorful street markets in Guatemala. There are a lot of traditional Mayan items and a lot of random tourist kitsch that you people back home can expect as gifts.<\/p>\n
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The clinic itself was very nice, with a working pharmacy, examination rooms, decent documentation and excellent Mayan to Spanish translators.\u00a0 Carrie took off and was doing some work with some other aspects of the group while Dr. Pope, myself and a nurse saw patients.\u00a0 The way this clinic works is that the first 50 or so people in line get a number, and apparently in order to guarantee yourself a number you may have to arrive by 3 or 4 AM.\u00a0 The large majority of the patients we saw today were sick kids under the age of 4.\u00a0 The most striking feature was how tiny these kids were \u2014 the larger ones were in the bottom 20th percentile for height\/weight, and many were at or below the 5th percentile.\u00a0 This is in part genetic and in part nutritional and definitely exacerbated by the large burden of parasitic and bacterial diarrheal disease around.\u00a0 The clinic offers a Leche (milk) program which gives nutritional support for some of these kids but only the worst of the worst.<\/p>\n
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Anyways, we saw a parade of cute kids with fevers, stuffy noses, cough, diarrhea, stomach pain.\u00a0 If I don\u2019t get sick I\u2019ll be lucky.\u00a0 The big dilemma with a lot of them is knowing that they won\u2019t have adequate \u201cfollow up\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 What I mean by that is that in the US, if a physician decides to be a little conservative in his or her treatment approach, the parent can readily bring their sick kid back the next day or the day after if things get a little worse.\u00a0 We aren\u2019t afforded that luxury obviously so it becomes necessary to treat things a little less than ideally.\u00a0 None of the kids were terribly ill, but a couple got us worried.\u00a0 These were a 15 day old and a 17 day old with fevers of around 102 degrees and no really obvious source of their fever.\u00a0 Newborns can get pretty sick quickly (\u2019decompensate\u2019) in situations like this sometimes, so in the US these kids are generally admitted the hospital for full infectious work ups and monitoring. No such luck here, but thankfully these two kids actually appeared generally alert and playful.\u00a0 We struggled with the idea of giving them antibiotics (Are we treating anything?) but erred on the side of caution and informed their moms that at the first sign of anything worsening they\u2019ll have to find a way to the nearest hospital, 45 minutes away if they can get a ride easily. \u00a0 Let\u2019s hope they will be alright.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we headed to the outskirts of Chichicastenango, about a 45 minute drive from our place.\u00a0 Chichicastenango is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/anthonypetruso\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}