For the past eight years, parishioners of San Felipe de Jesus and residents of Cameron Park have enjoyed the monthly visits of third and fourth year medical students from Frontera de Salud. Sr. Phyllis Peters, DC of Proyecto Juan Diego coordinates the visits and does the follow up care that is so often needed.The students spend Saturday assisting at a local clinic and doing home visits. On Sunday, after Mass, the students visit with people interested in checking their blood pressure, in testing their blood sugar levels or in having a chat about some medical problem they might be experiencing. The visits are always interesting, if not provocative. This time, the students happened upon a six year old who had had an appendectomy a month ago. The little girl had continued with abdominal pain, which twice brought her to the emergency room. The complaints continued and the little girl was in pain when the students arrived. A call to the emergency room, a conversation with the attending physician and a check of the records revealed that she had not had a CAT scan, a routine procedure for this sort of complaint. Some complaining, this time on the part of the medical students,
brought the little girl back to the medical authorities’ attention. Perhaps she has some pockets of infection, or a small sponge that stayed behind—in any case, she is being seen again—and her case is being taken seriously. At the end of the Sunday clinic, the students are invited to Mass, where the community prays for them--and prays that some day they come back as medical professionals.
