Enfermeras en Piura, Peru: Holy crap!

Anyone remember when the answer to one of Kevin Siebenlist's questions on a biochem exam was holy poop? This was my morning at hospice with Lauryn. We spent much of our time with a patient named Guadelupe. She had a stroke a while back and is paralyzed on the right side of her body. Additionally, she has lost much of her mental capacity. She currently has pneumonia and is receiving end of life care at the hospice. We got to use some of their masks (which are very in demand and limited) as it is possible that she has/had tuberculosis. Sadly, she has to have restraints on all the time because she pulls out her NG tube. She does have a urinary catheter but is incontinent of stool. When we got to her she was very soiled, as was her bedding. As a nursing student I have dealt with a fair amount of incontinence, but for some reason today takes the cake for one of my grosser experiences (including when I had to take a c.dif stool sample). Other interesting experiences at hospice include being swatted at by one of the patients while trying to get a blood pressure, more background recorder lessons, and lots of besos.

Mototaxi ride to get to clinical- this little cart is attached to kind of a mini motorcycle.

In the afternoon we went on more home visits. We were mainly doing blood pressure screenings. A lot of the people we saw today bordered on being hypertensive, so in a couple days someone will be back to take BPs again. I was feeling great since I'm like normal height here (Peruvians are pretty short!) until once again I was told by a patient "You could be 15" in espanol. I am 21. No big deal. Anyways, one of the elderly men we saw kept kind of asking us to live with him. After much deliberation, we figured you would all miss us too much if we stayed in Piura. Oh well. Our last visit included giving an older woman a haircut and cutting nails. She lived with several generations of family, and they were very inviting and wanted to talk and take pictures of us. So inviting that they gave us some homemade juice to drink. It's super rude to decline when offered food/drink. So Lauryn & I are kinda nervous about how our stomachs are going to feel about that juice tonight. We ended the visit by praying with the family and snagging another mototaxi back to the parish.