Back to Tegucigalpa

Hello again from TegucigalpaWe had a really good week here with the medical team, which was hosted by two wonderful Catholic sisters who work here. The team worked for four days and this time I felt well and energetic (most of the time) and was even able to help them, seeing patients and doing nursing procedure (lots of dirty ears to syringe... yuck). As in La Ceiba I found I didn't have much time to do interviews- these teams work very hard- but gots lots of information anyway, and will follow up with questionairres.
The team left last Friday, however we stayed around for a few days to talk to patients and to the sisters. We have come to really admire these nuns over the past week, between the 2 of them and some local help they have set up and run a sewing school, carpentry school, nutritional centre for malnourished children (unfortunately theres a lot of that here), and a health clinic staffed by a local nurse, as well as assisting people to improve thier houses and construct latrines. They are now building an emergency hospital here, and are looking for staff for that. Sulaco is a poor rural town (there are more horses and donkeys than cars!) and around it in the mountains are much poorer villages. Health services here are completely inadequate- we saw patients with goitre, breast cancer and other conditions that have never been treated. Sad. A small group from the team (not including us) went up to an indigenous village- 4 hours in a 4WD up the mountain. Some people came to them from settlements further on- 2-3 hours walk- some of whom had never seen a doctor in thier lives.
During the week 5 team members came down with a nasty respiratory bug... and the day they left Luis got hit hard- chest tightness, nasty cough, fever and sinus congestion. The next day I came down with it also- I didn't get the fevers but have been pretty miserable just the same. We stayed a couple of extra days in Sulaco thinking we may feel better but left yesterday deciding we were probably better off in the city where we could get decongestants and cough medicine and better food! Unfortunately the bus trip back was a bit if a nightmare- the first bus never turned up, we ended up in a tightly packed bus which stopped very frequently. A couple of policement were on board- apparently the day before buses on that route had been held up and passengers robbed. And just when we thought we were nearly there our bus stopped to pick up passengers from another bus whose brakes had failed (a very scary thought on those roads)... they were packed into the aisle, there must have been 150 on a bus designed to take half that!
Despite all this baby has been behaving- only had one morning last week with a bit of nausea- probably because I overdid it a bit working long days with the team. My energy levels are almost normal again, and my appetite certainly is... I feel like I'm eating all the time! The local ladies who did the cooking at the retreat centre made it thier personal mission to make sure I got plenty to eat including regular snacks! We will be here in Teguc for a week or so- we are planning to visit my mums sponsored child tomorrow (Friday), have a quiet weekend, then get some more work done next week- visit the Dept. of Health and get into those research notes!