Seeking Medical Care

It's exam week for the students, so I didn't have any classes to teach today. Instead of going to Gramothe in the afternoon for class, I rode up the mountain this morning with the team and helped in the dossier room for a few hours. It was fun to work with my husband and Nalouse again and to get to play a small role in the clinic ministry today. My favorite parts of working in the dossier room are seeing the faces of our patients through the window, especially the babies, and hearing where they live. I made my husband ask one lady from Bonga how long it took her to get to the clinic. She told us she left her house at midnight and walked several hours down the mountain so she could secure her place in line. She got to Gramothe sometime before dawn, probably between 2 and 3, and tried to sleep a little. Another lady was from Robin (up higher than Kenscoff). When Arold asked her how long it took her to get here, she said much the same thing.

Today there were many, many people waiting to see the doctor. There were actually a handful of people with dossiers already in the clinic that didn't get seen by the last team (very unusual). There were at least 30 people waiting with rendezvous slips, and those get pulled first. After we finished those Nalouse called the first person in line up to the window. We were going non-stop the entire time I was there. Just before I left at 11:30, we had added 63 people to our database. Those were just the brand new patients. Nalouse pulled at least that many dossiers for people who were already in our system. AND, there were still people waiting in line just to get their names on the list for today when I left.

Around 11 o'clock Yvner (pronounced eve-nair) came to collect the giant stack of dossiers, he asked me if it was the stack for today (as opposed to the stack from the last clinic day that was being filed). I told him yes, it was the correct stack, but probably not all for today. Eyes wide, he left shaking his head saying, "Not today. Not today."

I can't remember where in the stack my ladies from Bonga and Robin were, but I sure hope they get seen before the crowd hears the words "Not today. Not today."

I've written before about what happens in the dossier room when the clinic is open. Basically we keep track of the patient records. We pull the paperwork for each person who wants to see the doctor. If it's a new patient we create paperwork and add them to the system.