Day 5: Seine Bight

Julia Tao
Today, we went in the back of the truck to The Shak and ate breakfast, and then got on the bus for 15 minutes to get to Seine Bight. At Seine Bight, we set up upstairs and I started doing intake. There were a lot of people, and I was able to translate quite a bit and because many people either wanted to get their blood sugar checked or had a history of diabetes, I did a lot of blood sugar testing as well. To do blood sugar testing, you first put a strip into the glucometer with the small line going vertically down the middle facing out. Then you wipe down the finger with an alcohol wipe. Next, you uncap a lancet and use it to prick the finger, then squeeze until you get a drop of blood. You need to wait until the glucometer has a blinking blood droplet and then hold the strip of paper to the finger and fill up the entire line of the strip with blood. While you wait for the reading, have the patient hold a new alcohol wipe to their finger to staunch the bleeding. Finally, you need to throw all needles, bloody alcohol wipes, and the blood strip into the sharps container. An important step is asking the patient when they last ate, as that will impact the reading as well. Lunch today was chicken, rice and beans, a cupcake, and some salad. When we were cleaning up for the clinic, a kid sliced his right middle toe from his foot on a piece of glass. He had to get stitches because he cut an artery, so the adults held him down while Dr. Chau-hui Liu gave him 2 stitches. Unfortunately there was no way to do anesthesia, so he had to bear the pain. He was very scared, and we didn't want to traumatize the other little Belizean kids who were there or have them make him more nervous, so we had them wait outside. It was successful, and after everything was cleaned and packed up, we went outside to take pictures. Some of students play-fought with the little Belizean children, and they didn't want us to leave! While we were playing with the children, we noticed that many of them didn't have any shoes, like the little boy who cut his foot. Hopefully next year we can bring some footwear to help protect their feet. We then got on the bus and drove to Placencia, and brought back all of the medications. After a while, we took the truck to Cozy Corner to eat dinner (a lot of people were cracking open coconuts to eat). After dinner, I went back and slept while the other students fished.

Matt Cheng
The last day on helping people, we went to a community center and I shadowed the pharmacist again. The highlight of that day was when a child with a piece of glass he stepped on while playing soccer barefoot. I felt bad for him because he was writhing on the ground with about five people who had to hold him down during his surgery. After that, I gave him a whole entire bag full of chocolate and helped him. Even though he had to endure such pain and there was a lot of blood loss, it was all worth the effort. He left that one clinic brand new with bandages on his foot instead of glass.

Emmaly Nguyen
The last station I was at was the vitals/intake station. Here, I asked the patient about their reason for their visit, whether they were exposed to different things, etc. I also assisted in taking their blood pressure, heart rate, as well as blood oxygen percentage. I was a little scared at first, because I had trouble hearing some of their answers, and I was afraid I would take their vitals incorrectly. By the end of the day, I was comfortable with my actions. ​

Ethan Nguyen
The last and final day of working at a clinic. This particular clinic was a very surprising one. I still worked at pharmacy for three day because I wasn’t very interested with following doctors around. When most of the normal day passed, a friend ran around asking if we want to play football, and of course, Matt and I said yes. We went outside and we met a man. I forgot his name but we will call him T’Challa or “Black Panther” because he looked exactly like Chadwick Boseman. Anyway we were talking about how more people know Neymar Jr. than people know Lebron James. When we were talking to him and a man named Eric, my dad called me up to see something important. At this moment, I couldn’t take the feeling of seeing a little boy who got a chunk of glass stuck in his foot from playing football. Soon, Dr. Liu Sr. helped him and he was alright. When we were about to leave, many kids learn fighting moves from Ryan and were sad we were leaving, even though we were going to come back next year.
This was the most memorable event that took place on this trip but i'm glad I experienced it. With all of this going on I still want to become a dentist because many people came and asked for a dentist on the first trip. ON this trip I learned many things from learning how to take someone's blood oxygen to counting pills. Overall, this was the greatest experience ever and I would definitely do it again.

Dr. Tao
Last day of medical mission. The team was boarding our bus. A group of local kids surrounded the bus not wanting the team to leave. I stayed behind and gathered all the kids to me for their safety while the bus slowly exited onto the main road.
“Would you like us to come back next time?”, I asked. “Yeah!”, exclaimed the kids unanimously. “When would you like us to return, next year?” “Next week!”, “Tomorrow!”, they said. Touched by their spirit, I said “would you like us to bring anything next time?“. “Stickers?” “Yeah!” “Tattoos like the ones you got today?” “Yeah!” I heard a small voice amongst the excitement, “food”. I turned to the little boy in the yellow shirt. “Food? What kind of food?”, thinking he meant chocolate or candies. “Chicken, rice and beans,” he said licking his lips with a sparkle in his eyes. The Belizean stewed chicken, rice & beans dish is actually a plateful of rice mixed with beans and an addition of 2 tiny salty chicken pieces.
Finally I was able to board the bus. Watching those children waving their little arms to say goodbye to us, I picked up the microphone and looked at those exhausted faces in the bus. “What would you guys like for dinner?” No response. “Lobsters?” A few cheers. “Stewed chicken, rice and beans?” “Yuck!” Can’t blame them. That’s our stable for every single lunch and a few of the dinners over the past few days. Honestly just the thought of it makes me lose my own appetite.
I shared what I just heard from the little boy with the group. Suddenly there’s silence in the bus. A few people were crying quietly.
Seine Bight, we will be back!

​​(Dr. Tao continued...)
This clinic is a chaos! I feel like I was in the ER show where every two steps I would get stopped to handle some emergency situations.
2:30 PM, everyone’s exhausted. This is our last clinic for the medical mission. It has been extremely busy and exhausting for the past four days. “Close the clinic”, I told the students at the intake station. “Start packing up!”
Suddenly, there’s a loud crying scream! In the center of the room is Dr. Liu Sr. telling a boy in black to not move. Students, patients, many local kids quickly gathered around to watch the drama. “Don’t poke me!” “You need to be stitched up! You’re bleeding heavily!” Indeed, a messy pattern of blood quickly formed around them as the boy thrashed in fear. Two nurses from our team quickly went over and helped grab the patient. We are so blessed this year to have these excellent nurses from Long Beach Memorial Hospital who not only instinctively jumped to their duties whenever needed but tirelessly taught our students good patient care. I learned that this boy has been playing soccer all day outside of the clinic grass field. Periodically he and other kids would poke in their heads to see what we were doing. He stepped on a broken glass and got a deep laceration on his right great toe.
As the crowd gathered around him, the boy grew more anxious. A few students stepped in to try to help grab him. “Put on gloves!”, I yelled over the chaos. “Always be careful around blood!” The room is now a mad house! More local kids came inside to look. I told the students to take all the kids outside. “Let’s count to 10!, I said to the boy, “doctor will be done suturing you when you count to ten.” “Let’s count together.” “One, two, three...” Yay, he listened. “Five, nine, ten, how come he’s not done?!”, the boy started to get anxious again. “You didn’t count right.” “Let’s try again. One, two, ..., ten.” Dr. Liu Sr is done! Wow, I always heard about my dad being a great doctor but never knew he can suture this fast!
After cleaning up the bloody mess, I walked downstairs to find some plastic bag to cover the boy’s foot as it had rained earlier, the dirt road is now muddy, and the boy doesn’t have shoes. A group of little kids quickly gathered around me. “Can we have more stickers?” “Sure.” As I started handing out stickers, my pen dropped onto the ground. A little boy in a yellow shirt picked up the pen, carefully clicked it back onto my shirt’s front pocket. “How is he?” “Who?” “The boy upstairs.” “This is his little brother,” another kid said. “You know we grabbed your brother and stitched him up not because we went to hurt him right?”, he nodded with his big bright eyes full of trust. “His toe got cut by glass and if we don’t sew him back, he would bleed a lot. That’s why it’s important to wear shoes!” I looked down at these kids’ feet. No shoes. “Why are you guys not wearing shoes? Where are your shoes?” My son doesn’t like to wear shoes and I always scold him for being lazy to put on his shoes. “I have 2 shoes!”, exclaimed one boy. “I have one pair!”, said a little girl. “Why are you not wearing them! It’s very important to wear your shoes!” The little kids looked at me not saying anything. My pen dropped again. The boy in the yellow shirt picked up my pen and carefully clipped onto my front pocket. “Thank you.” He smiled back.
Later during dinner, one of the students who was hanging out with these kids told me that most of them only have 1 pair of shoes, and they only wear them during school time or important occasions. Some don’t even have shoes.
I recalled earlier an American social worker had dropped by to introduce to me her group who visits the town every 3 months. “We operate a feeding program.” “Oh great! I have a baby here who appears to have severe reflux. Can you guys teach these moms how to feed their babies?” “Oh, not that type of feeding program,” she said. “We literally come every 3 months to feed these kids food such as chicken.” “Majority of these kids are too poor to eat anything other than rice & beans, if they get any food at all. Unfortunately due to our funding, we can only afford to feed them every 3 months,” she said with a sigh.
Food and shoes. I cannot imagine a mere 4.5 hour flight from LAX we’d encounter a world that is only supposed to exist on National Geographic.
Seine Bight, you will always have a spot in my heart from now on.

Jacqueline Duong
On the last day at Seine Bight, it was a completely different experience for me. I was super engaged and constantly working at the intake station. I had less opportunities to connect with the patients, but I truly enjoyed the thrill of nonstop work. I learned how to take blood sugar that day as well, and I definitely was not excited to do so. I’m not particularly afraid of needles, but I was afraid of possibly inflicting pain on someone that I didn’t even know personally. Unfortunately, my fears were confirmed when my first few patients had to endure quite a few pokes before the job got done, but I soon got the hang of it. The day ended with a little boy getting cut with some glass outside and having to get stitches right then and there without any anesthetics...it was quite chaotic and heartbreaking to see the child in so much pain...That definitely was not my favorite part of the day, and it really made me feel so helpless. There was really nothing me or any of the other students could’ve done except watch and listen to the child scream will the doctors tried to contain him and stitch him up.

Alex Duong
The last clinic in Toledo had the biggest effect on me as it was the least developed area that we had visited. Despite being in Belize, many of us learned that many of the patients had been born in countries such as Guatemala because they had escaped as slaves. This was the poorest area, and many of these people had been neglected by the rest of the country as outcasts. The reason I learned the most this day was because I was able to shadow several accomplished doctors who were at the top of their fields. Specifically, one patient’s husband had had several accidents in the past, and his leg was in bad condition as there was a large open skin wound from a car accident that he had. Upon arriving to his household, we noticed how cramped it was despite having a family with several children. The man’s leg was immobilized due to the open skin wound even exposing bone, and his wife had to take about ten minutes simply to clean the wound and to reapply another bandage. Despite the painful looking process, the man was able to make jokes while calmly responding to the doctor’s jokes, and truly taught me a valuable lesson about how fortunate I was to live in the United States. The patient already had several surgeries prior to the accident, and was ready to have another one two days after we visited him. In contrast to his harsh circumstances, the man and his wife both had positive attitudes, and were very professional. The man was one of the strongest people I have ever encountered due to his endurance to the extreme pain that he experienced on a daily basis, while his wife was able to clean and take care of his leg with the skill of a medical professional in the United States simply by observing the nurses do the process once. What this taught me was to have courage and demeanor in the toughest times. It taught me to stay positive even when it sames that there is no hope left. Despite living in a developing country without the proper technology, the family was still smiling and living their lives. As a result, I want to become a doctor in order to help people keep their lives in order. I don’t want to allow mishaps to happen that ruin people’s lives, and even though I might not have the opportunity to see such an extreme scale again, I hope I can use my knowledge in order to shape myself into a doctor of the future.