To get from where I live in Hopkins to the hospital in Dangriga, I take a bus, which can get crowded (right)! Most people here handle the heat and humidity with much more grace than I, as my skin is still used to the frigid Rochester air. After the 20-mile bus-ride, there was not a dry spot on my scrubs, generating many oohs and ahhs from the other passengers. I tend to stand out in the crowd here as it is, and stepping off the bus looking like I just stepped out of the shower makes me a yet more comical sight to behold.

A sad event occurred last week. For many years in Hopkins, it was customary to dump one’s trash in the ocean. Some of the village inhabitants still do this, and dirty diapers occasionally wash up on the beach. Didi, a 4-month-old Rottweiler puppy, the youngest of Judy’s family’s 3 dogs, didn’t know better than to pull up dirty diapers that washed up on the beach. Likely, this is how she got sick. Last week she was not her usual perky self and wouldn’t even get up to say hello. We started an IV drip on her and treated her with fluids and metronidazole for presumed parasitic infection. However, despite our best efforts, Didi became septic and passed away Thursday night.

Below, some of the kids in Hopkins during the camp last week.

Yesterday we had a very successful telemed consult for a 4-month-old boy with some neurological deficits. Doran Mix, a 2nd-year med student at the University of Rochester, recruited two pediatric neurologists from the U of R, who generously did the consultation and gave recommendations for next steps in the care of this baby. The pediatrician here, Dr. Lewis, and the baby's mom seemed very pleased.

I must admit the success of this consultation balanced out some frustrations of earlier in the week, when 4 different meetings fell through due to people not showing up. I'm told this is the norm here. On the up-side, it's an opportunity to practice patience.

Judy and I just got done suturing up a woman's leg after a bad bicycle fall. For the rest of the day, we will be helping a volunteer group from Canada run a children's camp here in Hopkins.

And, as a side note, I'm including a picture of the local cuisine: rice and beans with stewed chicken and coleslaw, with Marie Sharp's habanero sauce. Delicious!

--Tina

Tina Gaud here -

Today marks 2 weeks here in Belize for me, and it's been a busy 2 weeks! Along with settling in to my new home in the small village of Hopkins, I've been seeing patients with Nurse Judy Krieg. A native Belizean, she was a critical care nurse in the US for about 20 years before moving back to Belize. Now she runs a health clinic out of her garage. I live next door to her in a rented apartment, and help out in the clinic. There are no doctors in Hopkins, so Judy is the only medical care outside of Dangriga, which is 20 miles away. Among the patients we've seen, one had been stung by a stingray, another had been burned on his face and hand when an oven he was repairing exploded in his face, and another was a local teenager with psychiatric issues.

Last week a group of cardiologists from Miami Beach were giving a free cardiology clinic in Dangriga. We took one of our patients, a 14-year-old boy with heart disease, into Dangriga to get an echocardiogram. We were happy to find out that his heart is holding its own despite having had no medical treatment.

My main purpose here, however, is to see how telemedicine can improve access to healthcare for people living here. I have been meeting the doctors in Dangriga and discussing with them how telemedicine may improve healthcare here, and we are planning educational lectures over telemed as well as consultations with the doctors in Rochester who volunteer with Intervol.

This weekend I've had some time for being a tourist, and yesterday I visited the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich with Judy and her family. Today I had a Spanish lesson with a local elder who is kindly helping me learn Spanish, and then I swam in the Caribbean Sea, which happens to be in my backyard. Tonight I will be having dinner with some friends I've met.

---Tina

View from the front of my house (left), and back yard (below).

Wild black orchid (below)

Xunantunich(below)

InterVol welcomes Tina Gaud to Belize. Tina is a 4th year medical student at the University of Rochester Medical Center. She has generously elected to take a year from her studies and dedicate it to helping develop InterVol's various programs in Belize. She will also help develop the Telemed program which will be used for patient care, physician and nurse education and much more.

Welcome Tina and thank you. We look forward to your blog entries.