Today was an excruciatingly humid day. It wasn't even that hot out but the humidity was intense! The pharmacy was busy today and constant vs. yesterday's splotchy chaos. That's more of what we expected though so it wasn't terrible. We dispensed over 400 prescriptions and had fun with our interpreters in the process. We saw many people with hypertension, VERY bad hypertension. The dentists and opthamologists refused to see patients with BP >150/100 since most of their problems were caused by there high blood pressure. Some patients were treated immediately and asked to wait for 30 min to be reevaluted. Most patients could then be seen after their BP came down. My MRE lunch today was pretty terrible. I'm actually looking forward to ship food...
Tonight as we were finishing up, we were called to an emergency muster. We were told that some buses had been arranged for us to go to the beach in 15 min! I was SO excited even though I didn't bring any swimming attire. But I quickly changed into PT gear, ran to sign the liberty sheet, and was on the first bus to the beach. We even got a police escort for the 6km trek to the shore. It was so beautiful, remote, and serene.
I didn't want to get in at first but everyone but a few were in the water within minutes. I got in for about 5 minutes total and I'm so glad I did because it was quite refreshing. One girl actually got stung by a jelly fish so I'm thankful I didn't stay in too long! Our interpreters came too so we took lots of pictures and had some laughs. All the locals came down to the beach to watch us as if we were celebrities. The interpreters said everyone is just so fascinated by us and appreciative that they ust want to be around us. It's very flattering that they all love us being here. As we returned to the school grounds, the children were so excited we were back to play basketball with them.
Slowly people began to gather around the pharmacy steps with a guitar and started singing songs. We stayed there for almost 2 hours! It reminded me of some summer nights in NH when we sang around the campfire. We also got the Indonesians (including the kids) to sing their national anthem. It was really cool to hear the whole thing. I was sitting here just trying to take it all in knowing these are some amazing memories I'm making. we mustered briefly before heading to bed. One more full day of treating patients before a half day on Friday before our departure on Saturday. (Little did I know that Friday would actually be our longest day here...)
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