(morning of) Day 3

I suppose it's because they're used to working with college and medical school students, but I've been surprised with the number of opportunities they've given me. I volunteered at the emergency room at Texas Children's and while it was an awesome experience that let me witness the day-to-day functions of the ER, it mainly consisted of preparing beds and rooms and making charts. During my first days here, I shadowed doctors as they saw patients and was walked through the full patient-visit process. They also showed me the pharmacy and let me see the clinic through a doctor's eyes.

I also met with Teresa, one of the visiting scholars’ directors, today to discuss projects. She's in charge of Teen Club, which is a group that meets once a month to discuss HIV, coming of age issues, and basic hygiene. The idea is for it to become a form of youth support group for teens living with HIV and identify teens that live close to each other to create smaller, more local, peer support groups.

Our first projects deal with preparation for the next teen club meetings and the week long camp in July. Lina and I are doing some simple administrative tasks with contract forms and nametags. We're also going to work on information cards for each child that include name, DOB, date of ARV initiation, HIV status (over 90% of patients here are positive), social status (guardians, status of parents, history of abuse, etc), ARV regimen, village, Teen Club status (how active they are), etc. We look all the file numbers up in the EMR computer database that holds all of the patient information. Whenever I open a file, I feel weirdly intimate with the patient as I hold their entire life story in front of me.

It's very relaxed here and everyone is extremely friendly. I'm used to working on strict time schedules with definitive, stressful deadlines, so the biggest adjustment I'm having is being able to relax and just take things as they come. Just to go with the flow of things.

I know that the administrative tasks involved in my projects may not seem very exciting, but when you realize the impact they have on the community and what the programs are working towards, the tasks seem far from insignificant. The thing I’ve realized while working here is how easy it is to ignore global crisis when you’re in a different country, different continent, with different living conditions. But how hard it is to look the other way when every patient you see and every name you look up in the computer system is a victim. I’m seeing the face of the HIV/AIDS crisis in every person I see and every file I open.