Don't you worry about Blog, let me worry about blog.

I have since given up my post at Centro Medico. Entonces: here is my new blog: www.therealityinstitute.net

mike!

Blogs? Blogs! You're not looking at the big picture!

Hola, soy Veronica Ribera. Este es el primer Blog que yo hice y, boy, estoy divertiendome! No sabia que tan bueno eran los Blogs. Mike me dijo muchas veces pero no lo crei! Ahora yo se y nunca voy a ignorar lo que dice otra vez.

Soy del pueblo donde queda la clinica, se llama Palacios. Palacios es un pueblo pequeningo que tiene 70 familias (incluyo la mia). Mucho del resto de mi familia todavia vive alla, como mi mama que es la alcalde del pueblo y cocina en la clinic para los trabajadores. Ahora yo vivo aqui no mas en Santa Cruz en la casa Molitch-Hou. Voy a la Universidad Gabriel Rene Moreno y estudio bioquimica.

Anyways, es bueno. Yo salgo con Mike que es muy guapo. toca la guitarra muy bien, y que baila como un rockstar. Tambien, voy a muchos conciertos de rock que es differente del rock de Estados Unidos porque aqui es mas duro como un rock. Por eso se llama rock. Tambien yo miro television y hang out con mi hermano Xavier y mis amigas Zoila y Ibana. Oh, also, juego con DJ, el perro de la casa.

Ahora, voy a hablar en ingles. Hi my name is Veronica Ribera. If it weren't for Blogs, I couldn't express myself in all of the ways that I would want to to all of the people I want to. Mike's parents are paying for me to go to school in Santa Cruz and they're not even making me convert religions to do so (which is good because the conversion rate is like so bad right now). My English is getting better every day and so is my Blogging. Of course, it helps to have Mike reading over my shoulder and telling me what to write (he's so good at Blogs! he makes sure I capitalize Blog every time I Blog!).

Eso es todo.

Blog!

Vero

Don't you worry about Blog. Let me worry about Blog.

Well, faithful Bloggers and Bloggees, I've resigned from my post as clinic coordinator once again. You're probably asking yourself, "But, Mike! What are you going to do now?" Then, you're probably thinking, "Oh, well, it's probably not really any of my business. Look at me! I'm being as nosy as a Nosy Sarah." It's only natural to have feelings of nosiness from time to time. As growing boys and girls, nosiness can creep up on you without any warning. You might even find yourself with a case of nosiness in the most awkward of places, such as a classroom or church meeting. Whenever I feel a bit nosy, I just look myself in the mirror or in the reflection of someone's sunglasses and say, "Mike, now is not the time."

But, as for the clinic, I realized that I've left you hanging on a few stories. For example, the woman, Aidee, who we sent for a cardiac catheterization had one done and the doctors found nothing, so her heart appeared to be fine. Then, she and her husband, Celso, the caretakers of the clinic, up and left with only about a day's notice for a different job. We were all taken by surprise and all pretty beat up about the whole thing. So, we all went out for milkshakes and talked about it and, by the end, we all felt a lot better. Except me, I was still a little peeved because Celso said he wanted my biscotti and I told him he could have a piece and then he ate the whole thing. He said I could use a diet. Can you believe that! But then he called "caballero" because he knows how much I like it when he calls me that and I couldn't stay mad.

Dr. Duke also came and did a surgery on a prolapsed bladder. I always wondered what a bladder was. My dad thinks its one of the more extinct dinosaurs, but I thought it was still alive. Then it turned out to be part of the female anatomy. I always wondered what the female anatomy was. My dad thinks its the study of the stars in the sky and I agreed. It turns out to be the same thing as male anatomy but for ladies. Anyways, Duke did the surgery and it all went great. The lady who's bladder was falling through her vagina now feels a lot more comfortable. And we can do more small surgeries at this hospital in the future, such as: hernia repair, gall bladder surgeries, hysterectomy, appendectomy, the works! I'm not sure what kind of surgery the works is, but it sounds fun!

The man we sent into Santa Cruz recently for a heart check up was a bit non compliant, going to Santa Cruz, getting an EKG done and then refusing to do more tests and going back to Palacios. We sent him back to Santa Cruz a bit worried that he'd need a pace maker for his low heart rate, as is often the case with people with Chagas disease, but it turned out that he just had a virus that caused a low heart rate and now he's all better and still has Chagas. Chagas is a life long disease for the most part. It causes problems with the heart and abdomen and things like that, but you can't really do anything about it until these big problems present themselves. Just about everyone I know from Palacios has Chagas. It comes from a big bug that lives in thatched roofs that comes out at night, bites your skin and then poops into your bloodstream. I'm not sure if I have all of those details right. I could look it up to double check, but there's no time. I'm blogging!

Rachel does not have anymore Dengues as far as I'm aware of. So she's returned to her post as coordinator. She said, "Thanks, Mike. I couldn't have done it without you. Here's a lollipop."

As for the blogs. Blogs are a beautiful thing because you can do them anywhere. On a bus. On a train. Under a bridge. In a drain. Just remember, don't you all blog too much. Long term blogging affects the brain.

MIKE

Take me where the Blog Blogs and all the Blogs are Blogs

Well, it´s been a long time since we´ve last Blogged. In fact, since I´ve even been coordinator of Centro Medico, but just like love, Dengue Fever does crazy things to this world.

I remember it like it was this past weekend... The new coordinator, Rachel Trotta, fell ill in our house in Santa Cruz. Says she´s got a bad fever and the only cure is Mike. Calls me up on the phone, she does, and says, ¨Hey, Mike, I think you´re gonna need to come back to Bolivia. I got it real bad, Mike. Real bad.¨

Luckily, I was already in Bolivia. I took some time off up in Chicago, the Silly City, with my friends and to ¨sort some things out¨ (I am legally forbidden to discuss what took place). I came back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia for the love of a lifetime, but got a lot more.

Now, Rachel is in bed in the big city with Dengue and counting platelets and I´m in Palacios Blogging Blogs. Things aren´t that much different. We still have medcial people and non medical people and patients and not patients. We just recently sent a man to the city to see a cardiologist about his low heart rate (due to that Chagas disease). When he got there, the cardiologist sent him for some more tests and instead the guy said,¨ Ï don´t want more tests, I want to go back to Palacios¨. Which he did. We told him to go back to Santa Cruz so he did. He´s there right now so we´ll see how that goes.

What have I been doing when I´m not helping with the clinic, you ask yourselves in your darkest hours? Well, I´ve got a plan, see. I´m going to write me a book, start me a magazine, make me a CD, and paint me some 12 odd paintings. By the end of next year, I hope to have me a publishing company a love stroner than the bars of a prison train. We´ll see how that goes.

I take myself where the wild wind blows, the women are fine, and where there are Blogs as far as the Blogs can Blog, that´s where I go.

Mike Out!

Blogged if you do and blogged if you don{t

I know that I{ve been writing blogs the American way this whole time (Patriotic and humble), but because I{m stuck with a Bolivian keyboard, I thought I{d give you a taste of Bolivia by typing up a blog using this [crazy[ keyboard. So instead of apostrophe{s, you{ll see brackets and instead of quotes you{ll see that other kind of weird bracket.

So I just got back from Country Gooding Junior (a country so wacky that they named an actor after it) and boy is my liberty tired. I{m not aloud to say the name, but it{s famous for the trade embargo imposed on it and t-shirts with some dude named Chet on them. It was like that time that Sam Becket got sent back in time to the 1950}s and had to prevent a vanguard revolution and he couldn{t figure out why he couldn{t leap until he realized it wasn{t the revolution he had to stop, but the marriage a dictator to his highschool sweetheart who everyone knew he didn{t really love, thus saving space-time-God-everything forever. It was an okay episode.

This week, a woman named Aydee who works at our clinic was put into the hospital to have a cardiac cathederization. This procedure will reveal whether or not she needs to have an open heart surgery, a stent, or not. It is very expensive and the surgery is even more expensive. The procedure itself will cost around 600 dollars, which is a fifth of our budget for a month, and the surgery might end up costing around 6,000 dollars. So this is a pretty big thing. Normally our surgeries for the month, we do one or two, cost around 200-300 dollars total. She works for us and lives with us at the clinic, so are going to do it everything we need to, whereas normally we might have to discuss it some more.

As I was not in Bolivia last week (the country where the famous Chet Gutenberg was killed by the Center for Immunizing Animals, a major agency for the Unlimited Stuff for All-People), the volunteers had to survive without me. And did they ever! They sent two patients to Santa Cruz, the big city, to be seen by specialists and took really good notes for me for when I got back from Country Gooding Jr.

This week we{re going to cook Thanksgiving dinner (turkey burgers and egg nog) at the clinic and in Santa Cruz. That{s two more dinners than the piligrims ever had with the indians, which is zero.

I will be going back to Chicago in December, but I{ll be staying here for all of next year, unless the Center for Immunizing Animals has anything to say about it.

¡Peace out!

¡mike!

Golb!!bloG

There ain't nothin' like a fresh blog in the morning! And boy is this blog fresh. If you rearrange the letters in the previous sentence, you can spell: And frog boy hits Slibesh. Boy, I feel bad for Slibesh.

As you all know, today is All Saints Day to honor the day that all the saints died. Everyone dresses up like Saints and goes door to door throwing eggs at people dressed like witches. As for me, I'm going dressed as Saint #3. In Bolivia, Halloween is a new thing and we bought candy but we're not sure if anyone is going to come get it. We're going to throw a party.

I stayed in Santa Cruz this week and worked on getting this lady a hysterectomy and went to the doctor to get my hernia (and ascending testicle) looked at. The latter, apparently, is a result of the former. They're not going to operate on my hernia yet. If it gets worse then maybe, but for now I'm just going to take medicine. The lady will probably have the surgery next week.

We started working on planning a series of surgeries for December when a surgeon named Janice Duke comes. She's going to do some hysterectomy things and things in a local hospital near the clinic. It's pretty exciting because it seems like with this hospital's help, we might be able to perform more surgeries more easily.

Next week I'm going to a little country that I cannot say the name of with a couple people. Let's just say its an island with an embargo and dying dictator on it. I can't say anymore or else they'll put me in a prison on that island. I'm excited to smoke Cuban cigars!

Soon the next coordinator will be coming and I will have to tell her how to do the job. Wish her luck!

Blog!
mike

Blog Fever!

Sorry, Loyal Fans and Readers. I was sick. I had it real bad. A real bad case of Blog Fever! I couldn't stop thinking about Blogs. It was like every time I tried to blog I would get so excited that a fever would set in and I couldn't even blog. So I just relaxed and controlled the flow of blog thoughts to the mind until I could sit still long enough to just a blog a little bit before I went crazy.

So, since we had our last intimate conversation, Centro Medico Humberto Parra has had a whole bunch of volunteers and patients. All of the old med students and residents have left and been replaced by two female residents, a female med student, a male med student named my brother Ethan, a female nurse, and a couple of love birds who just flew in to help with "green" energy for the clinic and cervical cancer screening. Also, my mom is here, right now, starring over my shoulder and chuckling about the word "blog". I told her, "That's not funny, mom! Blogs are serious business!" But she'll never understand. Also three doctors were here. (In reverse alphabetical order) One's name was Steve, another was John, and another was Amish. Amish surfs, John plays guitar (like a real pro!), and Steve gets overly excited and spouts facts about trees uncontrollably. Here's something he said once: "Man, if you brought a pair of binoculars out here to the clinic, you could have a field day! Holy cow!" A typical conversation with Steve went:

Schlomo: Hey, Steve.
Steve: Holy cow! I can't believe it's you! I haven't seen you in like 5 minutes!
Schlomo: I've got bad news, Steve.
Steve: Great! I love news!
Schlomo: Brad Pitt died today.
Steve: What?! I can't believe it! That's terrible!
Schlomo: Hey, Steve, check out that ant hill!
Steve: Holy cow! What the hell do you thinks inside that thing? I'd love to get a hold of a hammer so I could see inside there!

So he was fun. Me and Gretchen, the nurse, translated for him and John because they're Spanish was not great. Then we had a party for my mom. It was an aloha party. John sang a song, Derek sang a song, I sang a song, and Dr. Suarez a Bolivian doctor from the Hopsital Japones sang "I can't take my eyes off of you" in Spanish. It was beautiful. I wept like a willow and lept like a frog! Or should I say, I weeped like a weelow and leaped like a frog.

I went to Samipata, the ancient city where different indigenous groups thrived (such as the Incans, the Spanish, and the Nazis). We stayed at La Vispera, a quaint little Dutch hotel/cabin place and I asked them if they would hire me, they didn't say no.

A man had a tracheotomy and can breathe a lot better. My brother helped him replace his trachea ring. He is very sweet and wrote me a little note (when he couldn't talk) that said thanks and that he can breathe tranquilly. A man came in with carcinoma and, although we cannot save his life, we are going to give him radio therapy and control his diabetes so that he might be able to live more comfortably. We are also working on getting a woman double header surgery, which will involve the removal of a polyp on her uterus and a reparation of her hernia. Man, I tell you, I haven't seen so many hernias in my life. One time I saw a fat man in a polo, but that's not quite the same thing. I also saw Rush Hour 3. Don't stop making 'em, boys!

I should also note that I got four strikes in a row in bowling, raising my score from 22 to something like 102. I was kind of "out of it" so it was a big surprise to everyone playing. I think we still lost. Also, Derek, the "green" energy guy, said this funny thing. I was putting my pants on one morning and he says to me, "Wait. You put your pants on one leg at a time?" It was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

mike