September 12, 2007
Above is a photo of me taking Doña Marta's blood pressure. She and I hardly spoke before the above picture was taken -- her husband, Don Donato, (the cacique, or leader of the Wichi village) said that he wanted me to evaluate her medically and that he would interpret for me since she spoke limited Spanish. I don't know if you can appreciate it in the photo, but I was rather irritated. You see, in a village like this -- dangerous open cooking fires, little food, and lots of social and political problems (for example, the majority of the Wichi land was recently made into a federal park and they are not allowed to harvest wood on the national park land) -- there was a lot more involved with this woman's health than I could solve in one visit, yet so many hopes (her husband's and those who came with us to the village) seemed to be pinned on it.
Secondly, 90% of the primary care physician's diagnosis comes from the history, and I didn't know how to get an accurate history. Instead of interpreting, Don Donato answered most of the questions I asked without any input from her, and added a lot about his own symptoms as well. I've seen people "diagnose" from one or two questions before -- this happened daily in the Philippines during the military's humanitarian mission where I saw people given Advil to "cure" their chest pain. To me, that way of doing medicine is disrespectful, not least because it raises false hopes.I mentioned to Don Donato that from what I could tell, some labs tests would be helpful. We then started talking, and he brought up the fact that people came to them and gave them pills or wrote prescriptions, but that his people just got sick again later. I asked him if he would like the villagers to be trained so that they would know a lot about their own medical problems and would be able to prevent many of them. We discussed a screening that would help determine what issues were in the village (parasites, malnutrition) and then offering training to his people. He said that he would like that, since "it's not just medicine that is needed." Please pray that the people of his village, Ebenezer, will indeed receive that screening (we talked about it happening some time in February) and that it will be a catalyst for them to learn how to help their village.
Later on Doña Marta and I spoke some as we walked around her land. She showed me how she harvested fibers from a plant to make the beautiful weaving we had admired. We shared some laughs as I tried to pronounce some names in Wichi, including the word "Wichi" itself. I was glad to connect with her, even if only in a small way.
