Grippe

The flu season is officially upon us.

I laugh now remembering how I naïvely let a silly thought traverse my head earlier this summer, "I bet I'll miss the cough and cold season this year since there is no COLD in Haiti!" Oh no. Haiti may not usher in spring, summer, winter and fall, but it boasts its hot-and-dry and hot-and-rainy seasons which hosts a wealth of allergens, mosquito vectors and weather pattern shifts, thus serving to efficiently weaken folks' defenses to the change in the season all the same.

Yesterday's clinic in Carrefour was staggering. Earlier this summer I actually complained that I was making the hour drive all for naught when only a few patients showed up to clinic. Now, I'm begging for reinforcements. Today I saw over 35 patients in the span of 5 hours. I don't mind being busy and actually like the steady stream of faces, but when mid-day comes and the sun pounds down from directly overhead transforming all tin and concrete buildings into large, highly efficient microwave ovens, I get a little antsy. Claustrophobic. Down right cooked-in-my-skin hot and dehydrated. So it was a long day.

Yesterday's patients ran the family practice gamut from young men blushing over their inguinal hernias to newly pregnant women anxious to hear a fetal heart beat. Children by the dozen marched in with runny noses and congested coughs following old women sporting aching joints and upset stomachs. Always among the bunch is the mother hoping that the "foreign doctor" will be able to slip her a wad of cash to buy food and medicines for her kids. And the man who lives neighboring the clinic once again offered me his infant granddaughter to take home so his family of 15 can be decreased by one hungry mouth. Counteracting such sorry-I-failed-you interactions are ones that I convince myself I'm forming a true doctor/informed-patient relationship. Mom's look hopeful when I suggest a treatment strategy and a plan for follow up, glad that they won't be left option-less if the medicines fail to cure the first go-around.

By and large, it was the "grippe" that kept us hopping today. "Grippe" is a term that describes medical diagnoses ranging from cold symptoms to flu, asthma to pneumonia. Patrick and I have had our personal dance with the Grippe as of late, and I'm telling ya, colds are no less fun in the suffocating heat. Or maybe its just the lack of a Wall-greens around the corner. Then again, we might just be feeling sorry for ourselves. In clinic, I simply attempt to not let the "grippe" hide more ominous diagnoses like Malaria, Typhoid or TB. Largely, it was a little refreshing to be able to reassure, to prescribe antihistamines and cough syrups, and catch a lung consolidation here and there. When symptoms are described as occurring in the last 2 weeks instead of 12 years, I have to smile. So often I am met with folks who sit down and give me their entire health litany as I'm the one and only doctor they've seen in the last 40 years. "Oh yes, I have had a fever before, no, not recently, but I know how it feels."

So tonight after tucking in my sneezy, achy, grippe-ridden husband and popping a few extra Vitamin C tabs, I head for bed knowing that tomorrow will be full of seasonal sneezes, snot and shortness of breath, just like any clinic in the fall-welcoming States.

But I do miss that crisp chill in the air that transforms a cup-of-soup into a steamy home remedy. We prefer more icy versions these days. :)