Home visits

This morning Suzanne, Natalee, Jamie, Josie and I made home visits in San Jose. Senora Melinda led us to four different homes nearby; our plan was to see patients that were unable to make the trek.
At the first stop we visited Jose, a 33 year old man who was recovering from a motorcycle accident 2 weeks prior. He was resting in bed when Melinda introduced us. Jose described his accident and explained that he suffered several fractured ribs, a fractured left humerus, a head injury and various cuts and bruises. We counseled him on how to manage his injuries with various exercises and how to control his pain with ibuprofen. Jose was grateful that we could answer his questions and monitor his recovery.
The next house we found a woman who had fractured her foot months prior and could not leave her home. Her foot hurt and we could see that it was quite immobile and that her left leg muscles had atrophied. Again we provided pain medication and instructed on exercises to help strengthen the foot and increase mobility.
Melinda then led us down a steep trail to a small home nesteled along a hill. We met a woman who had a large lesion over her lower leg for several years. Suzanne had seen her on previous brigades and was dismayed to find that her condition had worsened since the last visit. She complained that the pain was quite severe and the she was not sleeping well. We cleaned the wound, applied a fresh dressing and gave more pain medicine. We planned to return the following day to change the bandage for her.
The last house we visited was for an elderly woman with arthritis in her knees, elbows and shoulders. The joint pain was causing difficulty with her daily activities such as dressing, cooking and cleaning. She reported that previous medicine she had received worked very well for her and so we gave her more aspirin. Her husband then arrived, sweating profusely from work in the morning. He sat exhausted, and reported an episode of chest pain, shortness of breath and collapse. Interpreting was particularly difficult as he had a tendency to mumble, speak softly and trail off. Fortunately his cardiac exam and blood pressure was normal so we gave him aspirin with the hope of preventing future cardiac events.
We eventually made our way back to the clinic with a busy day ahead of us, but happy to be able to explore the area and meet people in their own homes.