Monday

We had our normal clinic in Chicabracan this morning. Everything was pretty routine, including Juan Diego. He has been such a blessing in that place. Probably one of the best decisions we've made out there was to hire him to evangelize to the people who are waiting for their consults.

This afternoon, we had our American Medical Missionary meeting. Another great meeting. Just about everyone brought some extra meds they had, and just about everybody left with something they needed. Loaves and fishes!

The bad news we got was that the baby Heidi delivered just over a week ago died. The baby and mom had been here at the hospital in Quiche. The hospital originally told Mom that she'd have to be here for at least three weeks - which sounded about right to us. But, after just four days, they told her that she had breastfed once and that she should go home for Semana Santa.

Mom brought a very dehydrated baby to Leslie a few days later and it died.

Of course, we're receiving this story third-hand, but it can be SO, SO frustrating to deal with local healthcare providers. The value for human life is often not what we're used to. And training can be very inconsistent. We've seen some local doctors who are absolutely fantastic - they can do so much with so little. And we've seen some local doctors who are absolute quacks.

We had a few patients in clinic today who said that their local Centro de Salud had told them that they had arthritis in their lungs and needed an ultrasound from the gringos. Again, second-hand information, but GRRRR!!!!!

Tomorrow, we go back to Guatemala City to pick up our passports from Migracion. We could, technically, wait a week until we fly out, but if there's any type of problem then, we have NO time to deal with it and we could end up missing our flight. Not okay. So we'll drive four hours each way just in case... At least it'll be a nice day together and we'll get to satisfy a pregnancy craving or two!