Next week, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving in the United States.
I already know what I'm thankful for: I'm thankful for my health, for my friends, for the small comforts I have in my life that I take for granted day-to-day. I am thankful for the opportunity to volunteer to do really cool things. This time, it was with
The Order of Malta.

So after a one day layover in Miami (where I got to finally meet
lythandrel, I met up with the team in the Miami airport and we all flew down together. While my Spanish-literacy is nonexistent, I was quite happy to realize most everyone else was fluent. So just hang with the group!
There were 33 of us - about a dozen doctors (internal medicine, cardiology, urology, pediatrics, etc), and support staff of RNs, myself, and some other volunteers to act as translators or to do misc work.
The first night, we waited at the airport while all
25 gigantic duffel bags of medications went through customs (they were looking for expired meds - they didn't find any, because we were good about making sure we brought good meds ... if they'd found any, the whole bag would have been discarded!) Get on a bus for a dark nighttime ride to the mission, about twenty minutes away. Chats with various people to get to know them.
The first thing we did upon our arrival was unpack and sort those bags of medications - and then to bed!
One of the most humbling things about this whole trip was the fact that people would travel up to eight or nine hours to come see us... they'd arrive at 6 AM to wait for the clinic to open at 8AM. Compare this to an American emergency room where if you wait for thirty minutes, most are upset!
So by breakfast the next morning, there were hundreds of people at the hospital,
patiently waiting for things to open.
I worked triage, and our primary job was to do the initial intake of adult patients - assess vitals, get a history, and then pass them off to the doctors for their visit. In the three days I was there, I probably saw about 250-300 patients. Mostly adults, and then occasionally I'd pop into pediatrics to help them out as well. We saw the poorest of people in the Dominican Republic, and we saw refugees from Haiti too.
In the several days we were there, we saw 947 patients in the clinic, and since many of these patients had multiple problems (it's easier to ask who didn't have high blood pressure and diabetes, for example!), this translated to roughly 1500 doctor contacts. When it was known that I was a Cisco engineer, I became the designated tech support guy for networks and PCs too - so I'd bounce between doing medicine and doing tech stuff, which amused me greatly.
It's hard to put into words how amazingly good this trip was. There were great people that worked hard during the day, and then we'd go dancing or something at night, and then go back and do it all over again. It was heartbreaking (the photo set on flickr has photos of a couple of very sick kids that might be disturbing to some...), and yet it was good when you *know* you're making a difference in the lives of a thousand people, in a real quality-of-life impacting way.
In case you were wondering, even though the Order of Malta is affiliated with the Catholic Church, I never felt put out about it -- I was always welcome (about 1/3 of our team were not Catholics, and some were even very adamant atheists...), and we treated everyone regardless of race, class, religion, etc. I wouldn't have it any other way.
I had an amazing experience, and made many new friends. I want to go back next year when this same team heads back to Santiago. Unfortunately, I took a small handful of pictures since I was so busy. I did take a Flip HD camera with me, and I need to stitch some of those clips together and post them but in the interim, I asked Katrina if I could post her photos up on flickr in proxy so people could get a feel for what it was we were about...her photos have lots of kids in them because she was working in pediatrics...
All 100+ photos are available
here. Most of the photos are of the patients, the team after-hours, etc. As I said before, there's a couple of photos of very young, sick kids in there, so be warned.