Weekend

Well, Friday was a pretty good day in clinic for Heidi-- She was back up to almost a full patient load, for the first time in several months at the Hospital Buen Samaritano (since Dr. Hoak left...) She was able to schedule another vaginal surgery to be done on the 23rd and saw quite a few follow-up and prenatal care patients. One very happy patient is about 8 months pregnant, and was last seen by Heidi around this time last year for a miscarriage at about 14 weeks. It is always a privilege and a lot of fun to see patients in follow-up at happier times in their lives.

Saturday morning started early... We always leave here at 6 a.m. to get out to the Fickers's for clinic, but this time we had someone waiting at our door when we opened it to load the truck! A man was asking us for help finding out something about his wife, who he had left at the hospital in labor at 3 a.m. to take his mother-in-law home. The husbands and families are not allowed in the same room as the laboring moms here, and they are rarely given any information about their condition as things progress. This man had been told once that she was in the O.R. for a C-section, then several hours later that she was still waiting to deliver on the ward, then again another couple of hours later that she was in the O.R. for a C-section... That's when he had to leave! So he came back around 6 having no clue whether his baby had been born and whether his wife was okay.

This is just one example of why the people do not want to come to the hospitals to deliver. The man was not allowed in to see his wife (visiting "hours" are from 2-3 p.m. only) and no one could/was willing to give him any information at the ER, which is the only place that was staffed at 6 a.m. on a Saturday. So Heidi went down and walked him back to where his wife was, and found out that his baby and wife are both doing well. It just didn't seem like the kind of thing we should have had to "pull strings" to make happen... Very frustrating, but at least there was a happy ending.

Saturday clinic was pretty routine-- We're seeing lots of viral GI illness with vomiting and some diarrhea in the kids. One little baby showed up with mom at 6:30 this morning at the Fickers looking quite miserable with this. She had a temperature of nearly 104 degrees and couldn't keep much food down. Please pray that she got to feeling better with some symptomatic support-- We instructed mom to bring her to the hospital for IV fluids if she was not keeping something down by this evening.

Today was a little more interesting at San Andres-- One of the early patients had a breast mass that Heidi will try to biopsy at the Hospital next week... Please pray that the old adage about "see one, do one, teach one" holds true for Heidi-- and thank God that she has at least seen Dr. Hoak do one open breast biopsy down here! Also pray for the patient, Juana, and that she does not have a cancerous tumor-- this is another one that hits a little close to the heart for Heidi, having lost her own mother to breast cancer at a young age. Imagine her surprise and heartache to find out that this lady has a 7-year old little girl... named "Heidi", of all things!

There was also a ten-year old boy who came in with a machete cut from this morning on his hand which we were able to sew up. The funny(-ish) part of the story is that we couldn't figure out why there were two parallel cuts there in the same area, so at first were wondering if he had cut himself with some kind of weird tool with two blades. Upon further questioning, though, the mom told us that the other, shallower cut (literally about 1/2 and inch away from the one Heidi had to sew up today) was from where he cut himself doing the SAME work with the SAME machete YESTERDAY! Wow... fast learner. At least we were able to get him to laugh at himself during the procedure to make it go more smoothly.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Matt and Isaac were quite busy. Isaac is trying very hard to learn to crawl, and he seems just moments away from it every time he gets up on all fours. But alas, each time he finds that he can only go backwards (Matt calls it the "French Army crawl"... all he knows how to do is retreat, get it?!) He is so funny when he gets frustrated about it... especially when he gets his backside stuck under a couch or something.

Anyway, now we're home and getting ready for clinic tomorrow. We're excited that our friends Toby and Brittany are going to come with us to help out and to see what we claim to do all day down here. Toby will also be helping Heidi out in the O.R. on two surgeries Wednesday. Any volunteers for next Wednesday? She still needs a surgical assistant for then...