When a foreign body is not welcome

So I finally got to talk to Valerie tonight, and of course we mostly talked shop...eye shop. I informed her we had another eight patients this morning before I had to run down to see Jana off with Celeo for three weeks...intensive Spanish for her, helping the Church and TV station that we are helping along for Celeo's support (she may get her own show, who knows) and perhaps getting another milk project out there amongst other things. She is the first intern that we have been able to send like this for a long period with one of our pastors because her Spanish is proficient enough to do so. After talking to her and Celeo, and then to Oscar about how the anniversary went in Sampedrana last night, I then had to beat foot to the kid's school for report card day...which is once a quarter and the kids do not have school...you go as a parent and sit down for as long as you want and talk to them about your kids progress. Once again there was very thankfully not a lot to talk about...which means no big problems. Cecilia is doing very well, already in the second grade in some work, and despite her inherited hyperactivity, one of her teachers practically begged me to get her into singing lessons because she is already so impressed with what she does ("she sings so well...she has never had lessons? You need to do that...seriously, you need to get her into lessons while she is young to really develop that")

So anyway, back to eye stuff...eight patients and they were all pretty interesting. A follow up from Friday was healing nicely from his corneal abrasion...which was a nice confidence boost for me, and then I ended up removing two more foreign bodies. I presume that this mix of allergy, dry eye, glasses, bi-focals, kids, disease and foreign bodies is what Valerie sees all the time. She informed me that is not the case, which I found...very surprising. She said she knew that when we were working together before she left that we removed my first foreign body that God knew there would be more when she was gone...she said she very infrequently sees them as a matter of course. I am still reeling a bit from that conversation.

I am up late catching up a bit on the stuff I am supposed to do when not playing doctor...but mostly because I need to make sure the house does not flood again from the rain we are getting. We are getting more rain this April....well more than some months in the rainy season in some years since we have moved here, and April is supposed to be a month where it rains not once. To try to convey the seeming insanity...or miraculousness considering the dire straits we were in with the drought...is difficult. You know you need the rain when your house floods and you get caught running in it and you do not really mind.