We´re working hard, can´t you tell?

It has been suggested that Justin and I are having a bit too much fun down here in Ecuador (Mom). Believe it or not, we are learning a lot too :) I thought I´d take a second to tell you about some of the patients we´ve seen while we´ve been here.
Probably most of the patients we see have parasites and/or some spectrum of malnutrition ranging from Kwashiorkor to just low weight or anemia. Kwashiorkor is a deficiency both of total calories and of protein. Children with this severe condition have the huge cheeks and big belly that might be mistaken for fat, but is actually just edema or swelling. It usually occurs in young children, often around the time an impoverished mom tries to switch her baby from breast milk to regular food. It´s a difficult disease to treat and can lead to mental and physical retardation and even death. Moms often don´t know that just cows milk and starchy foods won´t give their children the proteins they need to grow healthy and strong. A lot of what the pediatricians do here is educate. Fortunately, most of the times we saw malnutrition it hadn´t reached such a severe stage. It was still hard to see.
The knee-jerk reaction for belly pain and diarrhea here in Ecuador is parasites, which wouldn´t be at the top of the list in the US. Rotavirus and other viral diarrheas are definitely present, but we saw countless children with lab-verified cases of parasitic enterocolitis.
We had one ten-year-old girl come in with the weight of a 5 year old and the height of an 8 year old. We sent her to rule out some sort of hormonal problem.
We´ve also had the pleasure to perform a lot of physical exams on healthy babies, toddlers, and young children. It´s a joy to talk with both them and their parents. They are sweet, helpful, and tolerate my atrocious accent with grace. I just like getting to play with babies all day, and I officially feel comfortable knowing what milestones babies should reach during each month of their first year (Thanks, Dr. Rosas!).
I think both Justin and I agree that we actually want to stay here for at least another week. We´re both learning how to phrase important medical questions and commands in Spanish, and just learning importants peds stuff in general. We´ll keep absorbing all we can.

Of course, we still have to have plenty of fun. Apparently just about everybody takes vacation Wed-Sun on Easter weekend, so Justin and I have been invited by my host family to head off to the beach. Whoopie!!!! I can´t wait to go, even if it means we have to start taking our daily doxycycline to ensure we don´t get Malaria. I´m apparently going to stick out like a sore thumb if I go down with my one piece bathing suit (like me sticking out is anything new here), so I may have to do some shopping to rectify the situation. Look out for some cool pictures when we get back!