The monotony in the Amazon jungle

It's almost an oxymoron: The monotony in the Amazon jungle. But medically, it was true.

I have struggled over the last two and a half weeks as I lived out and debriefed my time serving the Ticuna people of the Amazon. The months of preparation definitely didn't prepare me for all I was going to see, and more importantly, feel. I was one of two doctors (the third was a medical student who was a month away from his MD) providing medical care to people who would otherwise have no access to a doctor. Despite knowing the poverty of this village, however, I quickly realized that all the prep work didn't perfectly match what was actually experienced.

Simply put: my expectations were not perfectly satisfied.

What were my expectations?
...I expected to see the weird and the wonderful,
...I expected to see the challenging,
...I expected to see some pregnant mommas needing help on deliveries or fathers needing abscesses drained (I only drained one and it was very small, and ended up being a lil' pus around a bigger tumour),
...I expected to do more surgeries or at the very least, I expected to send more patients off to the hospital that NEEDED emergent care by a surgeon,
...I expected to use skills that I had previously needed in other rural villages around the world.

I expected to see the sick-- like-- the deadly sick.

Instead, I felt I was working through more monotonous, family medicine complaints of headaches, sore backs and bowel problems. I found myself prescribing analgesics and teaching people that drinking directly from the Amazon river will give you diarrhea.

I found myself unchallenged after a 100 patient day because only 10 of them required critical thinking and a somewhat challenging management plan.  My physical exams yielded few interesting findings; and the handful of IV solutions could've been left at home.

But then it hit me.
Why shouldn't their headaches or sore backs be taken seriously?
Why shouldn't these people be offered the same care we receive in Canada? 
Why shouldn't they???

Prescribing simple analgesics to these people shouldn't be any less important than to us North Americans. And despite my head knowledge, I still completely underestimated that poverty is more than just a one-dimensional beast: it involves poverty of resources, poverty of spirituality, poverty of knowledge, poverty of relationships...etc. Teaching proper lifting techniques and stretching could relieve much 'suffering' for a group of people that lack this basic knowledge to treat muscle pain.

And more importantly, I completely missed that teaching them to boil the river water for 20 minutes will literally save dozens of children's lives (far too many lives have been lost in this way and the stories are heart wrenching). The witch doctors have a powerful grip on villages like this one, and sometimes, the darkness can be too real.

Education, especially health education, is key on medical missions. You may sow much, but not reap any benefits. Individuals and families, however, will reap many more years of young lives being saved-- that is well worth the education. As the long-standing missionary informed me: education will mean many less burials each month. How is that not worth the monotony?

Here's to hoping it works...
...and here's to hoping this village finds true hope.