Strong US Immune System DOES NOT Equal Strong Ecuadorian Immune System

So the last blog there are BEAUTIFUL pictures of Otavalo...unfortunately cold weather and susceptibility to Ecuadorian viruses came with the majestic mountains.  This week, Stella and I have felt (and still feel) horrible.  It has made it very difficult to concentrate at the clinic and difficult to sleep at night.  The sweet doctor that we are renting from did bring us some cough drops and loratidine though.  She made me feel like I was at home for a little while :) 


So far at the clinic this week it has mostly been "gripe" (pronounced gr-ee-pay not gr-eye-p).  Since it's winter season here, it is also cold and flu season.  Today, as soon as we walked in the clinic, we were told to get masks because there were two sisters that possibly had H1N1 flu.  We also saw a couple of kids with a heart murmur.  The last couple days have also been filled with a few more interesting things, like observing a vaginal exam, suspected tuberculosis patient, and a baby with a horrible bacterial skin and soft tissue infection around his neck.  Dr. Carrion is still a joy to work with; even though I don't understand everything, I still learn something interesting from him each day.

Yesterday we began a new adventure...washing all of our clothes by hand!  I know this sounds super exciting, but let me tell you from first hand experience...it is NOT!  It took 2 1/2 hours to wash and rinse about 1/2 of my clothes.  Lesson learned: wash clothes several times throughout the week, not a full weeks worth of clothes in 2 days time.  Another lesson learned: be very careful not to drop the clothes while trying to hang them, you just have to wash them all over again.  We also had a "technology scare".  The light for the screen on my iPhone just decided not to work (according to my husband's research, this is called the "black screen of death").  Fortunately, today it started to work again!!  I'm so glad Stella can actually see her family now :).  And just FYI...Ecuador's spaghetti sauce in a jar is not as good as Prego or Ragu.