LMT

3/23/10
Things have been in a bit of an uproar around here lately (here as in down at the school.) This last week our amazing nurse, Gayle, left with her sons to go back to the States and when she returns she will be working up in a mountain village several hours away instead. As a result there's been no one else to take over the medical work and I've been feeling asolutely overwhelmed and underqualified. There's three different places now all vying for my attention at the same time - here at the school; "my" village, Manykee; and another village not too far away, Mawqwee, that's been one of Thramoo Gayle's special projects. Oh, but for the gift of omnipresence! Or, better yet, somebody else to help out! (Hint...hint...:))
The last few weeks I've been much more stationary here at the school. A couple weeks ago I spent around five days in the hospital with a baby that needed care and since then I haven't quite picked up momentum yet. Out of necessity, I've been making short trips up to Manykee - sometimes only several hours or less - and basing myself from here. Well, that is 'til last week when my precious mode of freedom and transportation - the motorbike - was stolen. It was taken from it's parking place under the house and someone came across it stashed away beneath a bridge not to far away. Only some mechanical difficulties - the starter was rewired or something - and the license plate ripped off. Should be able to find me putting again by next week or so.:) We were truly blessed that they found it! Especially since we wouldn't have been able to replace it right now.
So...my preference would have been to run away, but I find myself trapped in the midst of all this. Out of desperation, they decided to have a few of the students who are interested in medical work helping out with patients here on the porch. And so I've had a busy last few mornings with a porch full of patients and medic wanabes (they're really amazing kids...)!
This morning as I was in the midst of a cleaning spree of the medical supplies, all of a sudden inspiration hit! I thought to really train the students that are starting to help with the medical work, rather than just kinda letting them do their own thing with a bit of supervision. And thus LMT - LayKlewYaw Medical Team - has evolved. Now don't laugh at me, folks. OK, well laugh if you must. I'm only an EMT with a bit of additional training. I KNOW I'm not equipped for this, and, not only that, but I despise teaching with a passion. But somebody's got to do this and, sadly enough, I just happen to be the only somebody (actually nobody) around. But putting all that aside, I'm pretty stoked about this!
There's gonna be somewhere around 6-7 students. Each student will go through three stages of training - observation, internship, and field work. Each stage will be a certain number of required shifts (a shift being 9-12 in the morning on the porch adn "on-call" for the rest of the day), together with asigned bookwork, various other requirements, and and a test to pass. As an ending reward we hope to be able to set each of them up with their own backpack, and quality BP cuff, stethoscope, basic meds, ect. so that they can venture out to their own villages as able. Hopefully this will be complete in around two months. Hope that gives a sketch of it.Some of the students have high goals and I hope that someday they can follow their dreams and go to formal nursing/medical school. But for now this is the best we can give them. Please pray for us - this is so more than I can do on my own.