Simper Gumby

Today was Catarina clinic’s day to teach medical students at UNICA and the National Rehabilitation Hospital of Nicaragua. We were excited, nervous, and just a little bit unprepared, only because we weren’t really sure what to expect! My team (Natalie Phillips, Jeff Tsai, Nahum Navas, and Cait Cederholm) lead by Lisa DePasqual arrived at UNICA and set up for the day. We gave a presentation that re-iterated what the groups before us had taught on gait deviations and manual muscle testing and introduced topics on balance, assistive device fitting, and outcome measures. To our surprise, most of the medical students understood and spoke pretty good English (better English than I can speak Spanish, that’s for sure). Our translator did a fantastic job at relaying exactly what we wanted to say because he is a medical doctor himself. IN FACT, he was a doctor on the show Naked and Afraid at one point in time! I so badly wanted to ask him for stories about that, but I refrained myself.

Once we finished at UNICA we walked to a small administrative building where lunch was waiting for us. Turns out, one of our interpreter’s moms made lunch for all of us! Unfortunately the bus that was supposed to take us from UNICA to NRH was stuck in traffic, close to an hour away and we were supposed to be to NRH in about 20 minutes to begin the same lecture for a group of doctors. Our team’s moto is “Simper Gumby,” taught by our fearless leader, Lisa, so we just went with whatever the plan morphed into. That plan ended up requiring us to take a local taxi to our next location. That taxi ride was…..interesting….to say the least. You’ll have to ask me about that one on your own though. Haha.

Just walking into NRH was an experience in and of itself. Almost all of the buildings here have at least one wall completely open for airflow (I think). We walked up the sidewalk on the way to the classroom the doctors were waiting for us in and passed the prosthetics lab on the way. There were fabricated legs filling one room and staff working on forming and grinding down and perfecting the prosthetics in another. In each courtyard, patients lined the sidewalks, greeting us along the way. We finally made it to the classroom, about an hour late, so we had to cut down most of our presentation. Lisa gave an amazing presentation of EMG, using one of NRH’s doctors as a volunteer. It was exciting to see everyone working together all day regardless of the language barrier we have been working through.

Only 5 days into this trip we’ve had absolutely AMAZING experiences already, some happy, some sad, some heartwarming, and we’re only halfway into our mission here in Nicaragua! Its overwhelmingly touching to sit back and think about the big picture this trip is leading towards. We are one tiny step in the advancement of the healthcare system within this country that has already grown mountains in just the first few days we’ve been here. I can’t wait to see where the next week takes us!