Rio Caña is about 70 miles by boat from the nearest small community hospital, and VERY hard to get to–it requires a lot of planning and the willingness to endure pretty bad weather and rough seas to get there. It is about 6 hours in a huge dugout canoe, at the end of which there is a treacherous river entrance blocked by a sandbar with big surf. I know longboard surfing is widely popular, but until you have surfed a 50′ hollowed out log down the face of turbulent waves to enter the Rio Caña, you have not truly longboarded.
Accupuncture On Tropical Islands And Self Surgery
Man, sometimes a week brings a flood of minor upper respiratory tract infections, fungus, and the usual small town clinic maladies…and some weeks, the dam opens and all kinds of situations arrive on the doorstep. We did a lot of small surgeries, mostly taking off cysts and dealing with minor wounds, and did loads of […]
Elephantiasis On Isla Guanaja, Honduras
Last week we managed to get a weather window permitting us to visit Isla Guanaja, about 30 miles east of Roatan. This island, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Mitch, has only one small Centro de Salud public clinic, and only one doctor for the 10,000+ people living on the island. We plan to visit […]
House Call For A Monkey Attack
As we were closing up shop after a busy clinic day in Oakridge, we got a call from the Roatan Zoo—one of the new keepers had been badly mauled by one of the monkeys while cleaning the enclosure. Oh man…after a late night working on the computer and a CRAZY day in clinic I was […]
Ciguatera Poisoning
In the wake of Hurricane Richard (which we rode out safely on board), we saw a lot of problems from the rain and flooding like gastrointestinal disease and fevers, but we also saw cases of Ciguatera toxin poisoning. Ciguetara poisoning is caused by eating large predatory reef fish that have accumulated high amounts of cigautera […]
Hurricane Richard Passes Directly Overhead
Roatan, Honduras Wow, what a ride…a few days ago, Hurricane Richard passed almost directly over our position here on Roatan. For several days, we watched it approach, slowing down and gathering strength as it hesitated out in the Atlantic, almost as if it were undecided about whether to move northwest, as most hurricanes do, or […]
Cayos Cochinos Mobile Clinic With Clinica Esperanza And Roatan Rotary
Cayos Cochinos, Honduras Today we voyaged to the Cayos Cochinos island group to do a mobile medical clinic among the Garifuna people living on theses scattered, isolated cays. About 150 people, mostly children, live on the Cayos with little or no access to health care except on the mainland–and for most of the inhabitants, making […]
Isla Roatan, Honduras.
“Superinfermera” Here in Honduras, as it was in Haiti, on any given day my crew are usually spread out at several locations, and when I find out later the details of what they have been doing, I am always astonished. Today we recognize the awesomeness of the work done by nurse and instructor Sirin Petch. […]
August 28, 2010. Isla Roatan, Honduras.
On Wings Of Angels A few days ago we did a house call from the RBC Center to a lady who was 6 weeks post stroke. The family’s house was at the top of a 35-foot steep slope, and she had pretty complete right sided paralysis. Her speech and cognition were affected badly; she seemed […]
The Last Patient of the Day is Always the Hardest
July 8, 2010. Port Antonio, Jamaica. I have time to think about some of the patients we saw in Haiti. I told my mom about a burn victim—a guy who had, 32 days before he saw me, fallen and been knocked unconscious for 7 hours, left lying on the metal deck of the boat he […]