{"id":1084,"date":"2012-09-01T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T07:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/?p=1084"},"modified":"2014-02-17T22:25:35","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T05:25:35","slug":"student-spotlight-felipe-camacho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/student-spotlight-felipe-camacho\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Spotlight: Felipe Camacho"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nandini Puranprashad, Pharm D. Candidate c\/o 2013<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Felipe Camacho is a 6th<\/sup> year student at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy. \u00a0He received his Bachelors of Arts in Music Composition from Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. \u00a0After graduation, Mr. Camacho plans to pursue a residency at the Veterans Affairs (V.A.), Lee Memorial Health system, or the Indian Health services. \u00a0As part of his 2-month ambulatory care rotation, Mr. Camacho participated in a health outreach trip to clinics in Nicaragua where he was directly involved in patient care.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Q: What are some of the best moments from your trip?
\n<\/b>The trip was an amazing experience. \u00a0I enjoyed all of the doctors and students that came along on the trip. \u00a0The doctors and pharmacists were very informative and taught without being condescending in any way; it was very stress free and I learned so much. \u00a0I thoroughly enjoyed going into town and actually seeing how the more modern people of Nicaragua interacted. \u00a0I loved our hotel and all of the food that was prepared for us. \u00a0The fresh juice for dinner that was like a little \u201cleit motif\u201d to the morning\u2019s breakfast fruit was also a wonderful surprise and very thoughtful of the hotel hosts.<\/p>\n

Q: Tell me about one person you met.
\n<\/b>I remember seeing this pretty little girl, \u201cJB,\u201d at the triage station, when we were in Los Mangos. \u00a0She was about six years old and had a bright pink sundress on with black shoes. \u00a0She looked like she had just walked 5 miles with her mother and seven siblings. \u00a0I remember telling her how pretty she was and seeing her face light up as she smiled. \u00a0Her eyes had pierced my soul. \u00a0Her cheeks had risen and her lips parted. \u00a0My heart sank into my chest when I had noticed that all of her teeth had rotted down to brown-black stumps. \u00a0The translator helped me write down JB\u2019s chief complaints: upset tummy after meals, can\u2019t sleep, and generalized pain which triggered the question, \u201cHow many cups of coffee does she drink in a day?\u201d \u00a0I remember my jaw had dropped when the mother confessed to giving JB 9 cups of coffee per day.<\/p>\n

My first shift had ended when I finished with the triage of JB and her family. \u00a0I was able to walk them over to the next station to see the physicians. \u00a0I wasn\u2019t able to listen in on their diagnosis, but I was able to see it at my next station at the central pharmacy. \u00a0JB\u2019s mother was told to significantly limit the amount of coffee that JB could have and well as given 10 mg of famotidine, twice daily for GERD. \u00a0JB was also given children\u2019s vitamins and was counseled on taking the famotidine 30 minutes before meals that makes her symptoms worse and to take the children vitamins once per day to make her strong and healthy. \u00a0I got to watch her smile one last time as she and her family walked away into the tall banana plant forest. \u00a0She stole and broke my heart…<\/span><\/p>\n

Q: What was the hardest or most frustrating part of the trip?
\n<\/b>Not a big fan of the toileting practices here: we can’t, under any circumstances, flush the used toilet paper.\u00a0 We have to place them in plastic bags to be picked up the next day because they will clog up their delicate drainage system… I am so going to be constipated.<\/p>\n

<\/b>Q: What are some interesting things about Nicaragua that the average person may not know?
\n<\/b>–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The minimum wage salary here, if the even choose to enforce it, is $112.00 US dollars per month, that is $28.00 per week, $4.00 per day, $0.50 cents per hour and that is not really accounting for their week hours being way more than 40hours\/week.<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The gas here cost roughly 33 cordobas per liter, which is about $5.50 per gallon! \u00a0It cost us over $100.00 to fill up Brenda’s Jeep…a whole months salary! \u00a0You would think that stuff would be super cheep here. \u00a0It’s not!<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I get sad thinking about it; seeing mothers walk, carrying their children miles and miles on ankle-twisting, rocky roads, seeing a family of four creatively riding a tiny motor bike, one-hundred people squeeze in and burst out of a yellow school bus, and finally, how my annual salary as a pharmacist would mean I’d make $2,530,000 per year here…literally a millionaire!<\/p>\n

<\/b>Q: Describe a day at the clinic.
\n<\/b>My first clinic day was in El Chile. \u00a0As we set up our makeshift pharmacy, triage, and operating room, more people started to show up at the clinic and the line grew exponentially. \u00a0They were happy to see us, they never complained about waiting, and even after miles of walking and hours of waiting, they always came in and left with a smile and with not one complaint. \u00a0My first shift was in the OR with our makeshift operating table. \u00a0Our first and only operation was on a man that could not stand the sight of the lipoma on his forehead. \u00a0After I watched and helped with the bloody excision of the lipoma, I took on patients to diagnose and treat. \u00a0Triage seemed scary at first but once I got the hang of it, it was pretty awesome! \u00a0Brenda, our trip hostess, took in the chief complaints and age, and we took vital signs and weight. \u00a0After 8 hours of treating ~218 patients, I still had the energy to play soccer (with a beach ball) with the kids. \u00a0They are cute kids. \u00a0It was hard to leave them and it sucked seeing their faces as we left on the bus…no more smiles.<\/p>\n

Q: What did you learn about yourself on this trip?
\n<\/b>I \u00a0learned a lot about myself here. \u00a0I am perceived to be a millionaire to these people. \u00a0I thought we (insert minority race here) were born to fail in the US\u2014the people here really have no choice but to fail it seems. \u00a0I often think now how I used to stare a rich people in the states and wonder what it would be like if we swapped.\u00a0 It is also weird to see all of this poverty and then drive a few minutes and then see majestic mountains and you can’t help but wonder: how did things get to be this way? \u00a0Maybe I am over-thinking it. \u00a0Maybe they are fine the way things are and I shouldn’t compare the US to Nicaragua. \u00a0I love this country now and am going to miss the people and my new friends who translated for us. \u00a0I do hope to go back and visit someday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nandini Puranprashad, Pharm D. Candidate c\/o 2013 – Felipe Camacho is a 6th year student at the University of Florida College of Pharmacy. \u00a0He received his Bachelors of Arts in Music Composition from Rollins College, Winter Park, FL. \u00a0After graduation, Mr. Camacho plans to pursue a residency at the Veterans Affairs (V.A.), Lee Memorial…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[343,193,2269,702,2246,119,198,2227,838,35,314,20,39,731,340,725,207,363,968,1625,47,212,19,12,11,34,2239,33,2252,453,153,59,1061],"class_list":["post-1084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-opinions","tag-and","tag-annual","tag-chest","tag-children","tag-clinic","tag-complaint","tag-daily","tag-ebola-virus-disease","tag-famotidine","tag-food","tag-for","tag-health","tag-heart","tag-hour","tag-met","tag-mg","tag-minutes","tag-of","tag-one","tag-or","tag-pain","tag-paper","tag-patient","tag-pharmacist","tag-pharmacy","tag-residency","tag-salary","tag-student","tag-symptoms","tag-system","tag-upset","tag-weight","tag-with"],"views":616,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1084\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhochistj.org\/RhoChiPost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}