Granddad comes to Guatemala!

Isaac's granddad (Heidi's father) came in yesterday to visit. We had clinic in Nueva Santa Catarina on Monday, and due to the geography there, we drove straight from clinic to Guatemala City (to avoid a 3 hour backtrack) and spent the night on Monday night. We had some errands to run on Tuesday morning in The City, anyway.

So we were hoping for a relatively low-key clinic Monday to give us a chance to run a few errands on Monday afternoon, too. No such luck.

When we pulled up to the church there, about half of this hemisphere was standing there. Matilde told us he had sold 60 numbers, saw the horrified looks on our faces, and then revised the number down to 50. That didn't help much. Our normal load there is about 20-25 and each number typically comes with anywhere between 1-4 patients (the one number per patient concept isn't really catching on up there).

It wouldn't be so bad with that many patients in a day, except that Isaac still isn't extremely excited about spending 8 hours in clinic. Luckily, only about two fussy hours into clinic, Matilde's wife offered to take Isaac and carry him around on her back - Guatemalan style. He went straight to sleep and only woke up to feed the rest of the time. Amazing.

We have no idea how many patients we saw, but we went straight from 8:30am to 3:00pm with only a few breaks to feed Isaac. He still doesn't really feed all that well when Mommy's doing consults.

We saw our typical Tums/Tylenol patients, but we also saw some very interesting cases. We got a couple of prenatals, two ganglion cysts, some diabetics, a few surgical referrals, a young man who needs glasses (we told him to come get a prescription from the eye team here in Quiche and we'll help him buy some glasses - he's in 6th grade and seems very bright and promising. It would be a shame for the lack of a $50 pair of glasses to put an end to his school career.), and several other social cases. One lady is scared because her husband is a drunk and there's a lot of violence in her house.

Another young girl (14 years old) who is a member of Matilde's church came in with some pretty obvious STD markers. It's a little tricky when your translator is the pastor of the church and you have a situation like that. She doesn't speak Spanish and we're not about to explain to her pastor that she's sexually active. So we told him that for this particular problem, she'll need to come see Heidi at the Hospital Buen Samaritano because we didn't have the meds she needed with us - which was true. But we also have access to translators in the hospital, Heidi may have to do a minor procedure, and we'll get a chance to really spend some quality time with this girl - if she shows up. Please pray for that.

Anyway, we finally got down to the City Monday evening - much later than we had hoped for, but we really felt like we helped some people in clinic. We went to dinner at TGIFridays (yay for steak!) and went back to the hotel for some much needed sleep. Isaac is probably a very normal 7-week-old in which he alternates between unbelievably cute and unbelievably frustrating, but he was SO good for us on Monday, having spent 6 hours in the car, almost 7 hours in clinic, and being completely out of is regular routine. He fussed a little, but didn't stop us from doing what we needed to do.

Tuesday morning we got to the US Embassy and picked up his American passport, his documentation of American Citizen birth abroad, and applied for his social security number. It took 10 days to get his passport, but his social security number won't be available for 6-7 months!?!?!? We don't even ask any more.

We also went down to the municipal building and got two more original copies of his birth certificate (which will be impossible to get once we move back to the US - at least without a visit back to Guatemala) and then applied for his Guatemalan passport. We can pick that up any time after today.

About noon, we picked up Eddie (Isaac's granddad) from the airport, got some groceries, and headed back up the mountain. And we only got stopped for about an hour and a half on the road due to construction!

Anyway, today we're here around the house. Heidi and her dad are about to go to market. And Duane Ficker just called. Eddie brought some parts down for one of the trucks and the boys are going to fly over and pick them up... (it's a two hour drive each way from their house to ours, but only a ten minute flight - which one would YOU do?)

No pics today, but we'll take some and post tomorrow or Friday. We have clinic in Chichi tomorrow and may head down to Lake Atitlan for dinner...