Back to Work

Well, it was back to work today after a wonderful vacation at Lake Atitlán. Of course, this is why we're here, and it was nice to go to clinic well rested. We got to see several of our previous patients again, which is always a good feeling. Osni, a little boy with a cleft palate (and one of possibly FIVE), is doing better after a long discussion the ASELSI people had with his mom last week. He is in the milk program there and started losing weight. This is quite a problem, since he only weighed six pounds to begin with.

The people in the milk program found out that his mom had basically given up on him because some people in her village told her that her son was going to die. The ASELSI team convinced her that that was NOT the case. Cleft palates can be repaired, but he's never going to survive long enough to get the surgery if he doesn't eat. This week he was back up over six pounds again. Pray for his mom not to lose confidence in him!

We had another patient today whose chart indicated that he had a tumor on his back. We fully expected this to be a mole or a small cellulitis. Nope. This guy has an irregular shaped tumor about the size of a football (American football, that is - not that anybody on the Michigan State football team could identify one right now - but that's another discussion entirely) in the center of his back in the lumbar region. He's 73 years old and says he's had it for 20 years but that it's been growing in the last year. Dr. Hoak is out of the country for another week, but we'll be referring this patient to him with the hopes that we can help him out.

We also had a 11 month little girl with what the mother says is hydrocephalus. She's been to the capital (with ASELSI's help) once for a CT scan but needs another one now. She's not growing well - she's only 12 lbs at nearly a year old. She also gets kinda blue when she cries (not B.B. King blue, smurf blue). Sharon and John from ASELSI return tomorrow from a furlough in the US, so we'll work with them to get this baby some further treatment, too.

Also sad was a two year old boy who is not gaining weight. He's basically been the same weight for about six months now. He was doing well until his mother had another baby and then she couldn't take care of him anymore - she had the baby. He was basically left unattended most of the time and started eating dirt. Ever since, he's had diarrhea and can't gain any weight. We have drugs to help with a probable case of worms and with the diarrhea, but we can't help much with the other, more obvious problem. Pray for this family, too.

Well, that's it for today. Tomorrow we have clinic in Chinique, some work to do to organize this trip to Antigua for what we now believe is five cleft palate children, and prep work for clinic this weekend and next week!

I wanted to leave you with a C.S. Lewis quote I found on someone's blog on MySpace. C.S. Lewis is one of our favorite authors and this quote is a perfect example of why.

"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." - C.S. Lewis