WOW

I have no idea how to even title this one. What a long day! We went to Chichicastenango yesterday morning to do a clinic at Aselsi. We saw mostly routine patients, except for a woman in her 70s who's uterus has been falling out for 14 years. She needs surgery but isn't convinced she wants it. Surgery is scary enough for those of us who (kind of) understand it. When you're completely uneducated about it, it can be terrifying. We might have convinced her daughter that it'll help, though. We'll see.

We then went to the market in Chichi and were completely overwhelmed by entirely too many gringos. Chichi is quite the tourist town and Thursday is a big market day. Many of the white folks were quite obviously European, but there were a fair number of Americans. The image of the Ugly American is based on a lot of truth. We're big, we're loud, and we know everything. Heidi and I have only been here a month and we're already noticing these things. Jim and Kathleen had warned us about that and they were exactly right.

Anyway, we came back to the house to find that we had no power. So a siesta was in order. Two hours later, still no power. So we made some sandwiches and headed back to Chichi to spend some time in Dra. Karin's clinic. She is one of the administrators here at the hospital and we were interested to see how she runs her personal clinic versus how we've been shown how to run clinics "afuera" (outside). It was a very educational experience. She treated an 11 year old with migraines and a 1 year old with Scabies. The other three hours we just spent picking her brain! She is very knowledgeable and very helpful. She will be supplying us with a "wish list" of things the hospital needs just in case we know anyone who has one they're about to get rid of. For instance, the entire hospital has only 1 EKG machine! They really could use 2 more. Also, we've been approached by EVERYONE in the hospital about whether we have blood glucose strips. Apparently, the manufacturers give the readers away but you have to use their strips, which can run up to $1 each. The hospital, of course, has the readers, but they're out of strips. In a country where a large portion of the population is diabetic, that's a problem. So if anyone has access to a boatload of strips and a reader, we'd be very grateful if you sent them this way.

Anyway, we figured that the power problem might be related to the Festival Santa Elena this week. Santa Elena is the patron saint of this city and it is a BIG festival. There are parades and parties that last all night long. And we mean ALL NIGHT LONG! Guatemalans are normally pretty fond of firecrackers and M-80's, but this week is particularly bad. It sounds like bombs are going off 24/7. We're starting to get an idea how Francis Scott Key felt! Well, when we got home, still no power. The hospital had power, but we didn't. So we walked down there and asked around. One of the maintenance guys named Jorge was very helpful but couldn't get the power back on. So this morning, we went back and Jorge's counterpart on days was there (along with Jorge - 12 hours after we first saw him!). His name is Edgar, and between the two of them (and climbing into part of the building through a window - they don't have a key) they got our power back on. WEE!!!

Oh, additionally, all of the Consulta Externa's (clinics) in the entire country are shut down in protest of the government refusing to buy the equipment the hospitals need. The ER is open, but not the clinic. Apparently, this has been going on for nearly two months, at least in some places. We saw in the paper today that they have come to an agreement with the government and that the clinics are going to re-open tomorrow. Pray for all of this to come to some sort of resolution that is going to benefit the people of this country. It had gotten bad enough a few weeks ago that doctors had actually gone on strike.... Like we said, pray for them to get this figured out.

Anyway, sorry for the long note, but a lot of stuff happened yesterday. (And we left out the part about the semi-truck we saw them digging out with shovels that had traffic backed up for half an hour...)

More later!!!!