Continuing Promise 2015: Doh-mah-nee-kah

WiFi on the ship has been down for the past week and will be for the foreseeable future as someone plugged their laptop into the router in the middle of the night and hacked the password...now the seabees have to build a box to lock around the router so it doesn't happen again...they are busy out at site building ramps...
I'm currently out in Dominica enjoying a nice breakfast with good coffee...not galley sludge...Esther and I were able to get an early special liberty since usually we can't go out until after duty hours (1600-2030)...
Since arriving in Dominica on Monday July 27th I went out to site #2 on Tuesday which was an hour bus ride along the coast...this site was also at a school that is open air but we had a spacious room and lights and a fan...the best site since the mission has started...that's not say it's not without its challenges but the patients speak English with a few pockets of Creole so there was no need for translators...all the patients were very friendly and there was even a sports tournament going on...I believe its called the windward games...it's the 4 neighboring Caribbean islands that compete in basketball,volleyball, futbol, etc...

the navy band was also on site for a little bit...

The next day (Wednesday 28th) Emily and I were able to attend a SMEE at Princess Margaret Hospital with LT Phung and HM3 Fowler...we took a tour of the hospital which was also open air...it's a very weird feeling seeing that after going to the OR which is basically an upgraded double wide trailer the patient is wheeled outside across to the PACU...all the wards were big open bays full of those old school shopping cart like meds...like the kind you see watching the Pearl Harbor/ any WWII movie...everything they do is handwritten and there are only 4 pharmacists and 1 tech for around 260 bed so they do not have time to actually do their job they spend it handwriting labels and logs...we spent time explaining how to go about installing the laminar flow hood they acquired...they did not have a hood for inpatient IVs the nurse does it on the floor....we ended the day seeing a man who just died...a man we had seen within the past 30mins alive in the hallway...being wheeled on a gurney through the crowd uncovered...a patient had bled all over the floor so they almost slipped....another aspect that was interesting was that a peds surgery patient who was around 7yrs old was all alone...I think it would be rare in the states to have your child in the hospital and not be by their bedside...

Wrote this from my cell phone at the Fort Young hotel....all is well and I will upload more if the Wi-Fi comes up on the ship otherwise I will post a final blog once we land in Barbados