Day 4: Placencia Clinic

Julia Tao
Today's clinic was at the Placencia community center, so everyone walked there in the morning. My group was assigned to doctors today, but intake and vitals were busy so a lot of us helped there. There were many interesting cases at this clinic. Near the beginning of clinic, I went on a house call with Dr. Lee to visit a baby with a VP shunt who may have gotten an infection. Unfortunately, we didn't have any antibiotics we could give him, so Dr. Lee gave the family a list of antibiotics they could find themselves. Dr. Wu also did a lot of surgeries in the back room of the clinic today. One particularly interesting one was the removal of a large lipoma from under a woman's arm.
Right before the closing of the clinic, a boy with ichthyosis came in. This disease had caused his skin to become thick and scaly, and had tightened up the skin in some areas -- such as his eyelids, which he could no longer close fully. The pediatricians recommended various treatments to help, such as using a gentler soap and moisturizing with lotion.