Gustavo offered his home as a clinic location. He totally cleaned out the front room and a bedroom. The team swooped in and took over those rooms, his kitchen and his front yard.
Reception set up shop out front, recovery was in the front room, instrument cleaning/lunch prep occupied the kitchen, and the OR was in the back bedroom.
Clinic reception room in Marymar under threatening skies - protective tarps went up, later
Nicole and Stan recovering patients
Diana, Marco, Dr. Gaby, Mary, Nadia and MJ relaxing with cold Victoria after a long day
Gustavo had lined up fifteen patients from his neighbors in the colonia. He and Marco drove around picking up dogs, Isabel snagged a cat out of the street, and quite a few owners simply dropped in with their pets.
The walk-in aspect of the mobile clinic is the coolest part. Folks love their animals, but don't have the where-with-all to haul them to the vet. When the vet comes to them, they are so appreciative and thankful!
Depending on funds and drug availability, the animals also receive parasite meds and rabies vaccines. The clinic is free for patients, but the cost to our group, per animal, is a hefty $250 pesos (around $20 US).
Fund-raising is sporadic, iffy at best. Those of us without the means to contribute big bucks donate our time. Stan's donated much more than his share - he's been burning the midnight oil, lately, assembling documents to incorporate in the US as a 501(c)(3) with tax exempt status.
Here's hoping that we get the attention of some deep pockets who would like to help neighborhoods like Marymar.
SOAPBOX: Helping animals affects so much more than dogs and cats. Where kids' playgrounds are the streets and outdoor living is a way of life, cutting down on excrement, marauding packs, dog bites, and rotting carcasses improves the health of the whole neighborhood.
Andres kept the RanaQuemadas on tinterhooks all day, watching and waiting. For us, protected down in our holler, the storm was a non-event. We may have seen 35 knot winds in our treetops, but no damage at all.
TS Andres jumped to hurricane status as it passed Manzanillo
The airport clocked winds in the 30s with gusts to 55mph. Even though the hurricane was just offshore with 70mph, the winds scrubbed off when they touched the land, so we didn't see anything close to hurricane force.
All-in-all, if there's going to be a hurricane, this is the kind I'd like to have!
A big bang like a transformer blowing dowsed our lights for a few seconds, but they came right back on. A couple of hours later - during the worst of the storm, actually - the electric company was out checking on damage.
Other damage reported around town was minimal. The new fabric roof blew off the community sports center and a huge old tree gave up the ghost, right onto the main road. Again, workers were out hacking away at the limbs with machetes and moving them out of the road during the storm.
Leg, foot, paw, pad; English translations for pata. The Burntfrog translation is lotsa work, but lotsa fun: Personas Ayudando a Todos los Animales.
PATA is a loosely organized group of vets, vet students, a nurse, and a few North Americans who've banded together to help low-income neighborhoods improve quality of life for themselves and their pets. So far PATA's performed more than a thousand free sterilizations, visited schools with pet health info for the kids, and staged a kids' fair for the same purpose.
Then there are the PATA dreams: to sponsor a local student through vet school and to help set up an animal shelter (amazing that a city the size of Manzanillo has no shelter).
PATA's funding is hoof to mouth, so the dreams are way down the road. Lately, though, we received a windfall that is going to help with our near-term needs. Our vet-friend in Guadalajara sent a whole slew of animal cages. What a boon!
For the past four years we've been borrowing cages for clinics. During clinics, we need all sizes and types, and still have dogs tied to trees because there aren't enough to go around. Well, the cages we received are a terrific size so that we'll finally have enough for the small to medium-sized dogs and even the cats.
Most importantly, we're slowly getting out of the loaner business. Every year PATA loses or damages someone's personal cage, meaning we have to purchase a replacement for them. And then there's the headache of trying to keep track of the cages that people so kindly loan, sometimes up to sixty of them.
How can something as large as a cage disappear? Well, someone's always got the freaked out cat or dog that they need to carry home from the clinic, that's one cage out the door.... Then there are the folks who want to bring in a street dog or cat, but can't possible carry it, so there's another cage gone.... And the puppies/kittens that come in with mom need a place to stay while she's in surgery, and afterward when they need to be kept separated, so there goes another cage....
Most of the time borrowed cages are returned, but sometimes, well, people forget and they simply disappear. At least now if they go the way of the bison we won't have to pay a replacement cost, not right away, anyway, though we still need all of our cages, and then some.
Actually, we still need more cages. With the gift we just received, we're halfway to our goal of self-sufficiency. We're always short the perfect size, but slowly, slowly, folks are donating larger, more versatile ones for family-size packaging. If you know someone who'd like to bring PATA a kennel, crate or cage, here are the best types.
Not that it doesn't have its redeeming qualities. The weather is perfect, great for hiking. And the hiking is outstanding, lots of trails through the hills and around the lake.
But it's so good to be home. Communing with my own cats and garden. And my partner.
Fresh fruit for the perfect liquado is frozen for consistency, ice not required for a slushy, fun texture. Sometimes, extra water is required to keep the blender from choking.
Mangos are, yes, from our own trees. The little guys, collected daily during the season, are sliced onto a plate and frozen in a lump, which can then be chopped into blender-size slices. We're finally learning how to cope with the abundance of our back yard.
Bananas are purchased ripe and popped into the freezer, naked. Solves the age-old problem of a hundred bananas ripening at one time.
If one is really lucky, they're visiting higher elevations during raspberry season. Fresh frozen raspberries add a fun, seedy-crunch to the mix, and a pretty pink.
Cuz not alot of stores stock low-fat yogurt without sweetening, the combination of sweet yogurt, sweet mangos, and sweet bananas is overpowering. That's where the lime comes in.
When our backyard lime tree produces, Stan spends a whole afternoon squeezing juice into icecube trays. A couple blocks of frozen limejuice adds a nice little zip to a liquado.
There are all sorts of group-gropes offered in this English-speaking community. I actually partook of one organized activity. Although my social gene has mutated into nearly nothing, this little foray with the clubby set didn't hurt much, at all.
Not painful cuz the wildlife outnumbered the humans 50 to 1 ... a woman opened her hummingbird garden for public viewing. A few of us visitors got to sit amid the buzz, watching little battering wings and flicking tongues.
In the hummer garden hang twenty feeders that are slurped empty five times, daily. Each is washed, sterilized and refilled for the hungry diners. Human visitors are asked to contribute to the sugar fund.
At any one time, approximately fifty hummers are feeding. Plugging that number into the magic equation of how long each bird feeds, how many times a day, it's estimated that 250 birds feast in this garden.
Standing close to a feeder one can pick up the whir of wings in surround sound, like the hum of huge bumblebees. Makes you want to duck.
On the way home from the hummer garden, I was shown a bakery stuck way down an alley where no one could find it. That's what makes popular hangouts, the thought that they're secret. These guys were heating up the oven with a big fan blowing through a glowing hole in the wall. Formed dough goodies staged on racks waited to be shoved in.
Pastries already created, bread baked, wrapped and ready for delivery; the bakers' day was almost done - finished.
Harry the Cat had no toys until I came to house/cat sit. Since, he's accumulated an array of ropes and aluminum foil balls. He retrieves the balls; retrieves as far as, if I'm on the bed he brings them to me. If I'm not on the bed, well, he takes them there, anyway; not the boomerang effect one looks for in a retriever.
Harry has a walled yard, which is also his litter box. Works well, no scooping, and he's protected from the neighbor-hoods by a ten-foot wall.
The litter box
However, Harry's need for litter box doesn't coincide with my need for sleep. His favorite go-outside-NOW time is 4:30 AM. He chomps thighs and toes if I don't get the picture right away ... the little darling.
Swiss Chard
The fresh produce in the garden is awesome. The garden is not the litter box. Edibles grow in pots, profusely.
I don't know how, but the lettuce is growing and the bugs don't know. Is it all the basil peppered throughout? I've had luscious salads with all the ingredients of a Spring Mix, and no pesky little chew holes.
Also tried a few chard recipes. Chard needs special care in the cooking not to taste like dirt. Cousin Erica filled me in on how to drown it in limón after wilting it in the frying pan with chilis, garlic and onion, then letting it steam for awhile so the limón over-rides the chard taste.
The vets are on their feet all day, and usually operate, non-stop. If they sit, it's for a quick bite to eat or drink.
Once the vets finish up, however, the hard cores are still at work ... roadies of the mobile clinic. Behind the scenes work continues through the night, when the recovery room towels are washed, instruments are repacked and sterilized, and supplies are replenished.
Does it seem like all we do is spay and neuter animals? For awhile, that's what it seemed like to us, too! This map shows every place we've set it up and torn it down in the past six months. If you select the minus sign (-), repeatedly, on the top left of the map, you can see the whole picture. By clicking on the blue teardrops, you can read about each clinic.
With clever packing, our van holds three operating tables, twenty cages, half a dozen boxes of operating and recovery room supplies, a roll of grass mats, and a cooler full of sodas. Stan's great at packing it all in (he's also the go-to guy for supplies and odds and ends - spending alot of his clinic day rounding up the necessities, from sterile gauze to sodas).
The mobile clinics are a heckuva lotta work, but so much fun. Stan and I feel like we should be paying for this kind of experience. We've been able to insinuate ourselves into the local vet community and immerse in a very special culture. We'd never get this great type of experience any other way; we've gotten way off the beaten track; and we've met a whole slew of great folks in each colonia.
My welcome home from Casey's very sad memorial service, was the threat of a swine flu epidemic.
The Mexican government is taking health issues quite seriously. Even though our state of Colima has no reported cases, local health officials are supporting the feds in a national prevention program.
Schools have closed. Our annual city fair has been canceled. Restaurants aren't serving. Even our local super market issued masks to all of its employees ... we shoppers were the only ones without.
Soccer, also, has been hit. We're in the final week of the season, but officials are threatening to either cancel the games or let them play, but without spectators. Both of our teams are in the playoffs. We're thinking of donning telephone repairman's gear and perching in trees neighboring the stadium.
Spay/neuter clinics have not been called off. Our visiting vet, Dr. Yolanda from DF, wants to hold as many as possible before returning home next week. Stan and I, owning a large hauling vehicle, have been schlepping cages, operating tables, and boxes of supplies back and forth to various colonias throughout the city, as well as sterilizing instruments, running errands, and caring for animals in the "recovery room" (mats on the floor).
Three more clinics scheduled this week, and then, rest. Don't get me wrong, the clinics are a blast! We're having the time of our lives. How else would we be able to immerse in the culture and our community so totally? The vets, nurses, students and techs we work with are great teachers, and very patient with us, not to mention dedicated to their profession.
So, we're avoiding the flu by hanging around people who wear surgical masks.
Last month a whole slew of vets descended upon us for our best-yet volume clinic. In five days, 280 dogs and cats received free surgeries - and more than 280 owners came into contact with a whole new philosophy about human and animal health.
Part of the volume-clinic all-volunteer team: Dr. Yolanda from Mexico City, our own Dr. Gaby, Nadia (fifth-year vet student), Dr. Yoli's sister, Dr. Esther's Mom, Dr. Esther from Mexico City (thanks Gaby for the pic). Also helping out, but not shown, Dr. Fabiola and Dr. Martha from Guadalajara, Guztavo and Ernesto (interns), plus a whole raft of lay-persons.
