Wednesday

Isaac was so kind to let us sleep in today - really. He had a rather odd sleep schedule last night, but it resulted in him not really waking up until around 8am. Since we didn't have anything scheduled this morning, we got a nice "sleep-in".

Heidi went to market and Matt went to the gym (not at the same time, of course, Isaac doesn't do well in either place) and John went to spend some time with Jacob and visit Eliseo.

Then, about 1pm, Heidi went to Buen Samaritano for her surgery. One of the patients she was going to operate on is still a bit anemic and Heidi didn't feel too good about operating on her without some blood on standby. The woman's family will have to donate some blood and we'll continue her iron treatments to try to make sure she doesn't bleed out on the table.

Heidi did get to do a vaginal hysterectomy, though, and our friends Janeane and Danny assisted. Then they came to the house to have dinner with us, will spend the night, then go to Chichi with us for clinic at ASELSI tomorrow.

We had some pretty heavy rains this afternoon, so when Matt, John, and Isaac went down to Chichi to get Heidi, Janeane and Danny, the drive was, well, interesting. The green truck doesn't have A/C, so we're stuck between not being able to see if we keep the windows up (foggy windows) and getting soaked if we put them down. So it was up and down, up and down, up and down... Then we did it Guatemalan-style and came back to the house with three adults and a carseat in the backseat. Wee!!!

When we got home, John noticed that there was about an inch of standing water at our back door, threatening all of our electronics, which are located within about six feet of that door. With all the heavy rains, the drain in our west courtyard plugged and we had about 8" of water in the courtyard. So Matt slogged into the courtyard to unplug the drain while everyone else started trying to sweep water out of the house. Again, every day is an adventure.

More bad news on the Mazda. The dealership in Guatemala City called and said that it looks like the reason we're losing coolant is that it's leaking into the cylinders. They need to pull the engine and see how much damage we have. We'll be without the truck for at least ten days, maybe more. We were able to find an air filter for the green truck today, but it's still sucking wind, so hopefully it'll get us through the next two weeks. Keep our vehicles in your prayers. Those of you who've never been here will think that's weird, but our lives and the lives of our patients often depend on those vehicles getting us to where we need to be.

Heidi went down to the National Hospital today to check on the little girl that Jim, Roy, and John brought in on Sunday with pneumonia. She was discharged yesterday after only two days of IV antibiotics. It's likely that they gave her a prescription for oral antibiotics and even more likely that the parents didn't fill that prescription because they can't afford it. Please keep her in your prayers. Two days of antibiotics probably aren't going to do much good, but God can...

Again, tomorrow is ASELSI. Heidi has to check on her surgical patient before that, though, so it'll be an early morning.