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As a family physician with mostly outpatient pediatric experience, I found the first patient of the day a little daunting — a 4 year old with congestive heart failure due to rheumatic heart disease, AND sickle cell disease. Where I live this kid would inhabit multiple subspecialty clinics at a university hospital. However, she looked great after her Lasix adjustment and was ready for discharge. A referral from the local health center of a kid with a fever and rash later in the day reminded me that outpatient experience counts for a lot. A sandpapery rash….and a red throat to go with it. I’ve seen enough scarlet fever over the years to recognize it immediately. And I’d had a reminder just this morning of how important it is to treat strep! I’m celebrating my birthday today….let’s see, with a sunset from my balcony, a stroll on the beach, and dinner with an ocean view. Guess I’m celebrating my birthday month! because I get to do that every day in July.    
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Almost every child has a “cold.” The symptoms are as follows: swollen eyes, fever, abdominal pain, and joint pain. Then you have to figure out what they have — the kid with pneumonia had the exact same chief complaint as everyone else (the difference being her respiratory rate of 44). The trick, wherever you are, is to figure out what your patient means and how to translate it into what you mean.(It took me the longest time to figure out that when my US patients say they’re “dehydrated,” they mean their mouth feels dry. Not dehydration as I understand it, any more than Jamaican kids have a cold as I understand it.) Moms are really on it. They have got the protocol on using oral rehydration solution when their kids have gastroenteritis. “DPH” seems to be quite a popular remedy for the ubiquitous cold. It took me a bit to figure out that this is diphenhydramine, aka Benadryl. Perhaps moms like it because it puts the kid to sleep while they get over whichever cold they have! On day two, I remembered to ask an important question — has your child had worm medication in the last 6 months?
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are the same the world over. They run and tussle push each other and fall and break things. I saw two of them today — a distal humerus fracture and a radius/ulna fracture. Both got placed in posterior splints and send to the ortho clinic at St Ann’s Bay. Week one, day one. Medicine — it’s the same the world over. Nurses are helpful, colleagues answer questions, moms have lots of concerns about their kids. Oh wait…I haven’t had any moms in California ask (about pink eye and allergic rashes) “could it be Zika?”
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