Last Day in the OR

So today was a great day to go out on in the OR!  Just two gynecology cases, and Chris and Brittany were kind enough to scrub in on Tom's cases today so I felt like I was on vacation! Plenty of time to clean up some in the clinic and get things lined up for next time.  Chris and Brittany both have been such amazing hard workers and it has been a joy to spend the week with them.  

Speaking of which, forgot to even mention the great start the day got off to!  I managed to "somehow" oversleep after getting to bed after we finished in the OR at 2 a.m., but woke up to the news that Chris was already down at the hospital and pretty much finished with our rounds for us!  What a gift.  

We did a hysterectomy that we had originally scheduled for an abdominal case vaginally, a great victory for the patient's recovery.  Then there were only a few patients in clinic today-- one was this lady, well known to me from prior issues, but sent from the local doctor who had seen her a few weeks ago and left this as the entire clinic note!  Let me translate:

Ear pain.

Pap smear today;

Dx [diagnosis]: cystocele [bladder prolapse]

Tx [treatment]: Pap smear.

Yep, that's a quality documentation there, folks!  As much as it pains me on some levels to say this, please be thankful for yes, even the electronic medical records that we use abundantly in North America.  Luckily, this patient was fine and just needed a bit of reassurance... 

Then we were locked out of the patient care areas, so this is us waiting (along with lots of family members and friends of inpatients) for them to locate the young man who had the key... How can you not love this place?!?!

Then a bit later was probably the most entertaining laparoscopic surgery I have ever done~  just a sterilization ["tying tubes" to not have more pregnancies], but add in the fact that part of our troubleshooting involved a (sterile) rubber band as pictured here and literally holding the light cord up against the scope the whole time with one hand while operating on a screen that was over the patient's right shoulder instead of at her foot where it makes sense for gynecologists was... let's just say "challenging"... We found success, though, and have great surgical war stories to tell now so all was worth it!

The post-op patients are all looking quite great and very sweet-- especially little Micaela, who we had to take back to the operating room yesterday as you might recall.  The young man with the amputation looked much better today than we were expecting, and we expect that all but maybe one of the patients will go home tomorrow.  Please continue to pray for their recovery over the coming weeks and months. 

Tomorrow it's market time, helping Tom with some cases, then headed out to my second favorite place on earth (it becomes my favorite when my family comes with me!), the Fickers' home in Canilla, Guatemala.  Also fairly commonly known as towards the middle of nowhere, but a place where God has chosen to do great things through some amazing people of His.  Can't wait to see firsthand the work that has been going on!!  Check them out at the links on this blog to Adonai International Ministries and Rachel and Katie Ficker.   All who meet them are blessed, as we hope you are this evening...

Good night.

Arrival Day

Well, the first blog post of the week is usually a “Meet the Team” post where I let everyone know who I am travelling with… but this week is a little different.  I flew down by myself this week and my team is essentially joining me down here from in-country!  I was certainly a little bummed when I had no one stepping up and able to come down this time, but as usual, God has provided.  Now I’m as excited about the team as any recently… “God is good, and God is sovereign” will be somewhat of a theme here in case you are a new reader to this blog!

Anyway, I’m headed up to Chichi in a nice bus now that God also provided, this time through reaching out on facebook to some of the other local missionaries and hitching a ride with a team coming up (from Michigan and North Carolina, no less!) to work with Manos de Jesus and Pray America.  They’ve been great travel buddies and it was really nice to get to meet some of their long-term missionaries that I had not come in to contact with yet.

Tonight I will get to meet Drs. Jared and Melissa Cardwell, another one of the couples who are down here with Docs for Hope.  Some of you remember they are the amazing physicians that have agreed to staff the hospital now BEING BUILT out in Canillá (because God is good, and God is sovereign!) full-time for the foreseeable future.  All of the docs in their group are Family Practice-trained but very surgically minded and trained also.  They have an 18-month old son, David, who I can’t wait to meet either.  I love how kids are becoming a more regular part of these trips lately!

Please pray for their family as they are just recovering from a recent and seemingly quite nasty stomach flu, and pray that this week would go smoothly as far as their travels and our medical care.   I’m not sure where they are with Spanish, either, so some supernatural language lessons wouldn’t be a bad request.

We are also hoping to be joined by Dra. Lindsey, a Guatemalan-trained physician that has been working with Agape in Action for the last several years since her graduation from Medical School.  She and her husband Paul are such bright lights in this country and the ministry!  She started working with Jim and Kathleen Street now many years ago as a bilingual secretary, and became interested in the medical side of the practice.  She put herself through Pharmacy training without even mentioning it to Jim and Kathleen, and then Nursing  school as well!  When she and Paul then decided they wanted to go on to Medical School, Agape and Jim and Kathleen personally helped them with some scholarship money in hopes that they would serve in the capacity they are in now with Agape. 

God is good, God is sovereign—and God provides.

Lindsey’s infectious smile and love of learning all things in women’s health care and medicine will be such a joy this week, and her English skills are amazing (although she would never admit it).  I’m hoping I’ll get to see that fun look on her face again this week that Sarah Gore and I caused several years ago when we handed her a scalpel and guided her through a surgery for the first time!  Oh, how I WILL miss formally teaching medicine…

But God is good, and will provide.  Please pray that we never forget to give thanks for His grace and His goodness as we work a likely quite tough week.  We will try to post some pictures of faces to put with names tomorrow, but for now there’s just me crashed out on the bus here since I left the house shortly after 1 am local time to start travelling.  Tonight’s sleep will be sweet, friends…

Project 365 - Micah Edition

Project 365 - Micah Edition, a set on Flickr.