Interesting Weekend

Not one day goes by here that we don't learn something new. Friday, Heidi had an opportunity to take an overnight call with one of the local OB-GYNs, Dr. Milton Gonzalez. It was quite the interesting experience. Keep in mind that the girl we brought to the hospital on Thursday is still sitting here waiting for her surgery. The hold-up is that she has been told that for non-emergency surgeries, they need patients to get someone to contribute two units of blood to the hospital blood bank. This bank, before Friday night, had five units of blood in it. (Guatemalans are not really hip to donating blood.) Her husband will donate, but there's some debate as to whether she needs to have HER blood type donated or not. Hopefully, Monday will clear some of that up.

Anyway, Friday night, they had four deliveries. One was a fifteen year old with her first baby. Another was a rather interesting 26-year-old whom Heidi delivered. She was quite large by local standards, wouldn't lie still, and had quite the screaming contest with her new baby. Fun. Yet another was a 22-year-old who'd been an alcoholic for 10 years. She was in the process of miscarrying her 14 week baby. And dying herself. It turns out that becoming an alcoholic at the age of 12 is hard on the body. The cap on the night was the C-section they did on a baby that was dead when it came in the door and had an arm hanging out. Heidi wanted to try to get the baby out without cutting the mom, but the local staff simply insisted on operating. Yuck.

So Heidi got home at almost 5am and we got up at 6:30 to go to Canilla for clinic with Leslie. It's a good thing we went, too, because she was SWAMPED! Instead of working together, we simply set up two stations in her clinic and two-at-a-timed more than 60 patients. Then it was bedtime for Heidi!

Today, we did another clinic in San Andres. On the weekend, we saw an untold number of prenatal patients, some impetigo, a bike accident (nice road-rash on the face), a lady with something growing on her foot, a broken tailbone from a delivery four months ago, and a dog bite. Pretty standard stuff.

Anyway, this coming week, we are in Nueva Santa Katarina, San Bartolome, and Chicabracan. The first and last are rural clinics. San Bartolome is a Centro de Salud (Center of Health) that has recently been built for the purpose of decreasing fetal and maternal mortality in one of the worst areas in the country. We believe that God has placed Heidi in a position to help teach Obstetrics to the workers in that government clinic. Pray for that venture to go well and for us to really be able to help!!!

Okay, just one pic today. This one is of Matt holding one of the patient's babies today while she was being examined. Note the mother's shoulder on the left hand side of the pic, about Matt's waist level...