Crazy Clinic Day

Well, today was even crazier than yesterday. Transportation was not nearly as challenging, as Chichicastenango is reachable by paved roads, but clinic was nutty. First, it seemed like every time we opened the door, there were more charts in there! Second, we found a few more patients to add to the prayer list.

One patient, Jacinta Pol Suar, had a relatively routine start to her visit. She is 38 years old, in her 11th pregnancy, and has 10 children living at home. Matt was "wheeling her out" while Heidi started the ultrasound when she said, "You've got to be kidding me." Our second molar pregnancy in this clinic in less than a month. (Molar pregnancies are not really pregnancies as much as they are tumors that need to be removed. If ignored, the mother can hemhorrage and possibly die.) Molar pregnancies occur in less than 1 in 1,000 patients, so to have two in less than a month is a bit of a bummer.

You may recall the story with our last patient with a similar situation. She spent 10 days in the hospital here in Quiché, had to pay two people to donate blood for her, had to walk into town to obtain a chest x-ray and a blood test, etc. And she was a "western dressing" Spanish speaker. This woman wears the traditional dress and only speaks K'iche. She's not likely to get preferential treatment here.

Anyway, she told us through the interpreter that her husband is a pick-up truck driver (not his truck, though) and was in the capital today. So she's planning to come to our house at 6:30 tomorrow morning for us to explain things to her husband and take her to the ER and help get her admitted and get her started on the process. Then we leave at 7:30 for clinic in Chinique. So please pray for things to go smoother for her than they did for Laura, the last patient (who, ironically, we were supposed to see today and she didn't show up.)

Also, please add Osni Arturo Peliz to your prayer list. He is a three-day old baby with a severe cleft palate. It's severe enough that he can't eat. The folks at ASELSI (where we do clinic on Thurdays) gave the family some special bottles for him and some formula.

Oh, and we got another argumentative male patient today. Fun, fun. He came in complaining of sore hands. His right hand looked pretty raw. He says he works in the fields, which would explain that. We told him he needed some cream and needed to wear gloves. He said that there was no way because the other workers don't need gloves. We tried to explain that each person is different and that some people need things that other people don't. He must have been able to tell that Heidi was two or three seconds away from asking him what medical school he went to because he finally quit arguing and just moved on to his next complaint - gastritis.

We went into our standard explanation that some foods are not good for that and he looked like he was ready to argue again, but just gave up, took his meds and his advice, and called it a day. Who knows whether he'll follow any of it or not (you know where MY money is), but all we can do is lead the horse to water...

One last tidbit for today. We got to videoconference with Matt's parents, who have his niece, Sophia, for a few days. We hadn't seen her since July, so it was really neat to see and hear how much she's grown! If you don't have Yahoo Messenger, you should really consider it. It's free!!!

Okay, gotta run. Please keep those folks on your prayer list, as well as a pregnant woman we saw this morning with a possible previa - and one friend we have in the US who's having some difficulties with her pregnancy... We know prayers work. We've seen the results firsthand.