And so came to an end my Panamanian escapade. For those of you that are still here, still reading, I thank you endlessly. Your support for me during the last three months and support for the blog was really important. For a time I was convinced that nobody was reading these, and it was thanks to you that I was inspired to keep going. Anybody who wants to talk to me about any of this, please reach out. I imagine you all have me on social media or my number, but better yet, I would prefer ye to leave a comment below, and if there are enough I can address them in further blog posts, like a Q+A type deal. I am looking for things to occupy my time as I do everything possible other than study during my isolation here in Dublin. Speaking of Dublin, what on earth have you guys done to this place since I was gone? It’s so much colder here than I remember it. I hate the cold.
Getting back into Panama City was like a rude awakening to the chaos of Western civilisation. Coming out of the airport I got the cabbie to take me in bumper to bumper traffic to the testing site where I got my PCR swab done. I spent almost 90 minutes in the cab with him and he only charged me 8 dollars. Nice. That same afternoon, I had a meeting with management and Nicole about the clinics. Nicole and I were pushing for more time on site, just trying to brainstorm ideas of how we could maximise the patients we saw, instead of having to leave people behind that we knew were sick. It was a deflating conversation, because in opposition to our rainbow dreams of saving the world there was the financial and physical reality of our limitations. It was a conversation that happened every year with every new doctor they told us. There is just never enough to do all the things we want to do it seems. Ever. The next day I flew back across the Atlantic and re-took my place atop the throne of our student house in Dublin.
What comes next for me? Well with Floating Doctors this is certainly not the end. I have met with admin since I left and I am going to help out with the development of the electronic medical records system. I am also cooking up a few research questions that I think could be interesting to explore in light of our access to these populations immediately after a near complete cut off of services for close to year. If we can properly study our metrics, we might be able to draw some conclusions about which kinds of patients suffer more when an acute cut off like that happens (civil wars, economic crashes, changes in government), It’s not every day that you have a place where all healthcare was cut and then picked back up after with enough stability that you can investigate the short term effects. That’s something I am sitting on at the moment. With regards as to what happens for my career after graduation is a different story.
I am not sure. I will find out next week if I got a residency position in Philadelphia, which has a global health specific internal medicine training program. I applied very narrowly because that’s what I was looking for. It’s the only place I got an interview, but one is all I need I suppose. That pathway would enable me to incorporate missions like this into my training for the next three years, as it allows for elective blocks abroad. I have this website domain for 36 months so maybe there will be more content to come someday. If that doesn’t happen I am gunning for a post in Ireland, and if neither of those pan out I will return to Floating Doctors for a year while I apply more broadly and reassess my options. It’s a win-win-win really, my life is a dream.
As for the journals, as some of you may know, I am in the process of trying to re-write them into an actual book for publication. Should be an interesting journey, and such a publication might never come to fruition, but I may as well give it a go. I feel like it would be a great way to plug the work here and maybe raise a little money for the next guy in my position. Big dreams I know. I am a dreamer.
Cheers,
Juan
