My last few days in San Carlos

I´m back in Carorita. The trip back was long, about 9 hours in busses, taxis, and boats, to go a maybe 250 miles. Venezuela is not a large country, but going anywhere takes a long time.

My last few days in San Carlos were organized around a visit from Toby´s family. They have a long history of helping there, and also wanted to see Toby on his birthday. We toured around some and they visited old friends. An aunt is a doctor, and she saw the regular patients as well as having a small clinic in Zapara. Sadly, the 20 year old diabetic with a terribly infected foot is probably going to lose it. One of the boils busted open and a toe is starting to go necrotic. FInally, she´s willing to go to El Mojan for treatment, which probably also means going to Maracaibo to have her foot amputated and for dialysis, because when I saw here Saturday she looked to be on the verge of renal failure.

But, it ws good to meet his family and talk to people in English. I was very sad to leave, but my time is winding down, and I had to leave sometime. I left enough money with the clinic to finance them for a while. With what Toby´s family brought, they have enough medicine for a while, but they need things like gauze and Bactine to take care of the people with injuries and chronic wounds. I´m going to try to send some down with a group in January. Right now all they have left is a roll of the stocking material used to cover a limb before it is splinted. It´s not ideal, but it works and they have a lot of it. For some reason, gauze is expensive here. At home I think it´s cheap, or we at least use it as if it is.