Weekend Clinics

This weekend was a little different from normal because Leslie and Rachel are in the U.S. picking up Hannah. And Katie just took in a two-day-old baby, so she hasn't slept in the last few days.

Clinic was mostly Matt and Heidi on Saturday, though Katie did come out for a little while when Sarah (the baby) went to sleep.

Saturday afternoon, we worked on some things at the airport, watched kids and babies, and relaxed some.

Sunday clinic was Matt, Heidi, and Craig. We saw around 40 patients, but had to turn away almost that many. We knew that with only one and a half stations, we couldn't see nearly as many people as we normally do with three and a half (Matt and Craig see a few patients, but mostly very simple ones). It was very difficult to tell people that we couldn't see them today, but most seemed to understand when we explained that two of the three doctors were not here this week (nurses, doctors, there's not much of a difference in our clinics!)

Anyway, we escaped with our lives and our sanity, but next week will probably be a zoo! Luckily, we'll have Leslie, Hannah, Katie, Heidi, and our medical student, Tammy, so we should be able to handle it.

Speaking of students, starting tomorrow, we'll be hosting a 4th year medical student and two pharmacy students for the vast majority of the month. We're very excited about it and hope to have lots of learning, teaching, sharing, and witnessing moments!

Tomorrow morning, though, we'll be out at Chicabracan for the first time in a month. We're usually there every two weeks, so one of two things will probably happen. Either some people will have given up on the clinic and it'll be thin or everyone in the whole village will be waiting for us! Pray for something in between!

We haven't posted any pics in a while, so here are a few. The first is one of Heidi at the Hospital Buen Samaritano, writing some orders (or maybe giving one...). The second is a shot across the courtyard there. The hospital is a two story building in the shape of a hollow square. There are rooms all the way around on all four sides and it's open in the middle.

The third pic is of a kid and his dad we gave a ride to on Saturday morning. Yes, he's about 8 years old and yes, he's carrying that machete by the blade.

The fourth pic has a story. We just survived our first hail storm here in Guatemala. It's about time for the rainy season to start and start it did. At first it was just a little mist, then some nice gentle rain. Then the rain got a little harder, then it got CRAZY hard. We looked outside and realized that all that pounding on our roof wasn't water. Some of it was hail! Then we looked around and realized that it was hailing inside the house, too! (Our roof design is vented to allow some airflow but when it's blowing really hard, rain/hail can enter, too.) We got a pretty funny picture of a bunch of hail on our bed! (You can see the baby bed in the corner next to our bed - that's as much of a nursery as we're going to have!)