I have 30mins before training begins, so I am going to try and get down as much as possible from yesterday. It was a clinic day (Wed and Sat), so we left around 1pm from 'the compound' to head across the line. A quick digression. We have a "lead guy," Lawrence and his wife, who lead us to the clinics and arrange for the meds to get in there as well. He has been working with SMI since it has been down in Harlingen, about 6-7years. On clinic days 2 groups (2 vans each) go to 2 different sites, one following Lawrence, the other his wife. Back to the story. Yours truly was selected to be one of the drivers for the green team and we would be following Lawrence (i've driven the van down here a lot, but not to the clinic). So me and the other 14 people in the van start out following Lawrence. So apparently, we were 20 minutes behind schedule and Lawrence didn't like that. So to insure we would arrive on time, he upped the MPH. The picture above was taken after across the line on a 2 lane "highway". Honestly, that wasn't even the top speed that day. After we crossed the "bridge," the roads became suicide lanes. For those of you not familar with suicide lanes, they are a road with a single lane of traffic going either way, with about 5 feet of "shoulder" separated by a dotted line. The reason for the moniker, "suicide lanes" is because in order to pass, one moves into the middle of the road (literally the middle of the road) to pass and you hope (and pray!) the cars coming the other direction move over into their "shoulder" area. Over there, practically speaking, there really are no driving rules. One pretty much does what he wants to do and what rules do exist really only apply once your in an accident. So here we are 15 people in a van - did I mention its from '90 and has 100,000 miles - traveling 75 mph (120 kph) down a 2-lane road passing people like crazy. I think the marked speed limit was 60 kph (about 40mph). It was absurd! Completely needless to risk the lives of 15 people (not to mention the other 20 in the other vans) to make sure we weren't 20mins late. Now if your really astute, you'll notice that it was even more absurd for me to take a picture while driving 70mph on a 2-lane road while passing people. I pulled Heath aside when we got to the clinic and made my concerns known. But what an experience!!!

Once we got there, about 20 people were waiting for us. We unloaded quickly and set up as fast as we could. I was assigned to pharmacy to start with, so we had to find all the drugs, then sort and separate them. After that was done, things were slow initially for us until the docs started finishing up with the first wave of patients. We have 8 docs at our site yesterday, which is a ton. Its usually like 4. It made for a very busy afternoon in the pharmacy. I think it was divine retribution for all the times I've written Rx in the hospital and write "QS" (quantity sufficient) on the # line, saying to myself "let those pharmacy guys figure it out." We say around 80-85 patients on the day, which made it our busiest clinic to date. The others previous had been kinda slow, so its great that we could see as many patients as we did, especially since we had the manpower (doctors). So that was pretty much my day. I stayed in the pharmacy the whole time. They asked if I wanted to switch out to work with a doc, but let Ezra instead, since he hasn't had the chance yet and I have both previous clinics.

This morning we have training as I already mentioned. The afternoon we are going door-to-door in Tx to do screenings and proclaim Jesus!

PS - I'm sure ya'll (remember Tx) would love to see pictures of me actually working - honestly, I do work! - but they are all on other people's camera... I'll try to get some on here in due time.