Week 4 ~ Giving Back

An old co-worker of Crystals came to visit the clinic this week. He told me about how every year he goes the Haiti for a week to help care for people in need. Haiti is a very poor country that is still recovering from an earthquake that happened many years ago. Crystal donates some of the medicine and supplies from the clinic to this former co-worker so he can have more resources in Haiti. He described how there are families struggling to live a healthy life with the chronic poverty that is happening. This former co-worker is very inspiring and interested me in doing something like this in my future.

Tuesday I saw a cute little baby get a checkup. One of my favorite things about this internship is the wide variety of ages and health issues that I get to see everyday. A patient then came in with an ingrown toenail. They had part of the nail removed months ago but failed to take proper care of it. Crystal then had to do a small removal to prevent the infection from worsening.

On Wednesday Crystal explained a little about vitamins and how vitamin A, D, E, and K are fat-soluble; these are stored in our bodies tissue. She showed me a patients chart and how the vitamin D level was extremely low and that this patient needed to be taking vitamin D pills to raise the levels. A patient came in needing a sports physical, so Crystal checked the common things like ears and nose then also checked spine and asked a few questions. 

It's always a very difficult time losing a loved one; it was hard to see the next patient come in and talk about losing their spouse. The spouse had been battling cancer for years and had just recently passed away from the terrible disease. This patient that came in stopped taking care mentally and physically of them self because they were always caring for their loved one. Crystal had a long conversation with this person and ultimately prescribed some medication and gave some advice that could maybe help grieving. 

Thursday I learned that once a month every women has an ovarian cyst. A patient come in with this and was afraid it was maybe cancerous because she was having terrible pain. After talking with her for awhile, Crystal come to the solution that this patients colon was clogged due to the medications she was taking. To fix this problem Crystal prescribed a medication that would completely clean the colon out within 24 hours. Another patient that came in had seasonal affective disorder, which I learned is actually fairly common. This means there are certain months out the the year (usually winter) were a person becomes anxious and depressed to the point where they seem to never want to do anything. I love my internship more and more every time because there is always something new to keep me interested.