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To say it has been fulfilling work is an understatement, to be able to help these women (and in some cases, children) without forcing them to compensate me financially, a reward in of itself. Though I haven’t had to necessarily facilitate labor or birth on my own (typically the midwives have been in charge of that. We made some arrangements, and hopefully down the line I’ll get to be more hands-on), my patient exposure has been great and I'm looking forward to learning more as the days go by.

But the thing is, obstetrics isn't the kind of specialization I plan on pursuing, as I lean more and more towards surgery. So this is a bit of an interesting conundrum for me, where I do need to prepare for residency but my current situation does not provide me with much practical experience. Hopefully, that will change, especially when the branch nearby opens and I'm assigned to work there as a general practitioner and take care of all sorts of patients, not just mothers. So yeah, we'll see how that goes.

I've also been volunteering from time to time with another medical ministry group that goes out regularly to provide care to more far-flung areas. I just got back from one such day trip. One and a half hours of driving, and another hour of uphill hiking. I'm not exactly the fittest person on the block so getting up those steep hills is...was...challenging. But seeing the several patients today that can't even afford to make the trip to the lowest form of a healthcare center? It's rough. Usually we see the typical cough and colds, hypertension, diabetes cases but I also encountered an older cerebral palsy patient, and a 34 woman with massive intellectual disability, so that was something...

I'm not really wanting to be too forthcoming with what I'm feeling about that, partly because I'm exhausted, and because I still need to process. But yeah this is where I am right now.

And no I'm not receiving compensation for any of this at the moment (though I will be making an announcement soon over at my art blog)

Perhaps that will change down the road, maybe not, but it's a strange and unorthodox way of building my practice now, I guess.