One Week to Go

One week from tomorrow I will officially be finished with my year of service at NPH Honduras. Even though it is quickly approaching, it still feels very surreal. I do not feel like I am leaving! I am sure that it will hit me at different points through out the coming week, but right now I feel like I am still in the thick of life at the Ranch.

The most recent new from the Ranch, and from Honduras, is that there has been a Dengue epidemic. Dengue Fever is an illness spread via mosquitoes, similar to malaria except there is no medication to prevent it. The public hospitals are full of people with Dengue, so much that they have set up special units just for patients with the disease. Dengue usually presents with an extremely high fever, pain in joints, neck, and intense pain in the lower back. It can actually be very very dangerous, especially if it is Hemorrhagic Dengue. Up until last Thursday the Ranch has been very lucky and we have had no cases of Dengue. Unfortunately, the first case was one of my fellow volunteers contracted Hemorrhagic Dengue. She had a fever of over 103, and was in intense pain. On Saturday she started to have abnormal bleeding so I immediately took her to a private hospital in Tegucigalpa. Hemmorhagic Dengue is so dangerous because the patients can have abnormal bleeding, and or internal bleeding. If not monitored correctly they can easily go into shock and suffer from further organ damage or even death. The volunteers platelets and white blood cells dropped so low that she had to be hospitalized. Her platelets dropped below 20,000 (They should normally be above 145,000). She could have easily begun to bleed externally or internally. Luckily, we caught it fairly early and she was admitted to a private hospital where they took very good care of her. She is still sick, but is definately on the mend. Unfortunately since last Thursday we have had at least 4 more kids come down with symptoms that indicate Dengue. None of them have been hemmorhagic, but we are still keeping a close watch on everyone.

Other than vector-born diseases, everything at the Ranch has been going very well. I still cannot believe that in one week I will have to say goodbye to all of the friends and people I have known after the last year. At this point, I cannot even imagine what it will be like to say goodbye to Casa Suyapa. My little kids do not really understand that I am leaving. They know that I will leave on the 31st of July, but they do not really understand what the date means. They keep asking me if I will be here for certain events like Christmas, their birthdays, quinceñeras, ect and it breaks my heart to tell them no! I am definitely going to try to savor my last few days with my kids and enjoy the moment.

peace,
Anna