Goodbyes for Now

This week is my last volunteering session to be blogged about. The clinic was packed with patients. It had to have been the ridiculously cold weather, because everyone was sniffling and coughing! While I worked on more organization tasks for Nieves, I noticed many people were talking about getting the flu vaccine and then others were checking into their appointments because they think they have the flu. It was interesting to see that most of the patients with appointments were all having the same symptoms. The paperwork I was doing were lab results from previous week that needed to be entered into a new excel sheet for the start of December. Unfortunately, some of their computer programs, including excel were not working properly so I decided to come up with a different way to organize them to help Nieves out! She was extremely pleased and grateful when she saw that I was able to enter them in without excel, but on another program. She told me that this new way I entered them was probably more efficient for her so I am glad I was able to help! I guess those computer programming skills did come in handy ;-) . Another funny incident was that I saw a mother come in with her 8 year old son that had otitis media! I am recovering from that ear infection currently, so I was able to talk to her and tell her the symptoms I was experiencing. That was definitely a great encounter because I also felt like I was giving the Mom good information based on my personal experiences! Now just because this is my last blog....and I am sad...I already confirmed with Sam to keep volunteering next semester!!! I know next semester volunteering will be just as fulfilling as this semesters. Although at the beginning some tasks given to me were a little dull, I learned that every bit of help matters to the staff and patients of San Jose Clinic, and this was truly an eye-opener to what goes down with an undeserved population!

:-)