Weekend and Monday

Friday, Heidi had clinic at Buen Samaritano while Matt and Isaac were home. John went to the market here in Quiche and had some business items to finish.

Heidi saw six patients - three post operative patients and three more she scheduled for surgeries. Not a bad ratio for a surgeon! We're still not sure when Heidi will ever get a real day off, but people keep needing surgeries, so we'll keep operating.

Saturday was our drive out to Canilla for clinic there. Duane flew down to Guatemala City to pick up Craig and Hannah. It was great to see them after what seems like forever! Of course, within minutes, they were right back into the swing of things. It was wonderful to be in Canilla with ALL of the Fickers.

Saturday afternoon, we took some 4-wheelers and dirt bikes and rode out to the clinic in Chiminicijuan to hang a notice that there will be no clinic this Tuesday (we'll be busy with a wedding). Three 4-wheelers and two dirt bikes went out. Two 4-wheelers and two dirt bikes came back (one 4-wheeler finally succumbed to the "road" and we left it in Chiminicijuan to be repaired later). These roads are punishing!

Sunday was clinic in San Andres. We're doing our best to nurse the one truck we have still running (even though it's running poorly), but we got an emergency call from clinic that there was a sick baby there that needed oxygen and feeding tubes, so we loaded up the truck and drove to San Andres (Matt and Isaac skip this clinic and hang out in Canilla due to the extremely high number of contagious sick kids there). If the truck is going to die, it might as well be while we're trying to save a life with it. By the time Matt and Isaac and the equipment got to San Andres, the family had elected to leave. So Isaac got a bonus feed from Mommy and went back to Canilla to wait til the end of clinic.

Duane had to fly to Guatemala City again on Sunday to pick up Leslie's sisters (who were coming in for the wedding) so John hitched a ride down. Twenty minutes in the air sure beats five hours on the road! John spent the night in Guatemala City Sunday night and flew back the US on Monday (today).

Today was clinic in Chicabracan. The turnout was a little smaller than expected - we're told that today is the Dia de los Ninos (Kid's Day). Ironically, we saw several kids and diagnosed a pregnancy! One of our patients there is pregnant for the third time and has no living children (two miscarriages) and looks SO nervous every time she comes in. We were able to show her her baby's heartbeat today and she seemed like she felt a lot better when she left.

After clinic, we rode out to Chinique to check on the SOS Eye Team. They came in from Houston yesterday and are doing clinics this week and surgeries next week. They brought 24 Action Packers full of supplies - 3 of which actually made it. So they went to set up clinic today with only about 10% of their supplies. Ernest and Connie were waiting at their hotel in Quiche for the other 21 boxes to come in from the airport. Sometimes air travel can be SO frustrating. And the airlines wonder why they're all losing money... (oops, was that an editorial comment?)

Tomorrow, we head back to Canilla for Aaron and Katie's wedding (which is on Wednesday). Matt is playing along with Craig and Heidi and Isaac will be wearing traditional Mayan dress, so hopefully we'll get some good pictures!

Here's one of Isaac in a new outfit (many of his first outfits no longer fit). He now weighs 12 lbs. Only another 8 ounces until he catches Jake (our cat)!