Tuesday, November 08, 2011

From Chris Schwering this morning...

Guatemala Day3-4..."Your stomach hurts in your breast??"
(Thank you, Dr. Chris, for being generous enough to let me "steal" this off of your Facebook blog to repost here!)
by Christina Schwering on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 7:45am


Good morning! Well I will eventually have to wake my very soundly sleeping hubby who doesn't seem to be bothered at all by the noise here (oh that I was so blessed, but alas, earplugs are a beautiful thing!) but for now, I have a little time to sit in bed with my computer, serenaded by the rooster somewhere outside our room, and share a bit so here goes!


First of THANK YOU for your prayer support! This has been a great trip so far! Our patient load has been a little lighter than average but the percentage of people we can help has been higher than I can ever remember. I think of the 18 patients we have seen so far, all but 2 have actuallly had OB/GYN related issues! You always will get the "Macerena patients" as Heidi calls them ("Donde esta tu dolor?"... and they do the Macarena to show you...) and the sweet ladies whose stomach pain is located in their breasts and whose lung pain is in their shoulders (the Guatemalan counterpart to the "every back pain is my kidneys and every lower belly pain is my ovaries" patients), but most were referrals and therefore pre-screened and legitly needed our help!


So people who don't care for the medical details can skip on to the next paragraph, but for those interested... Yesterday we did 2 "vagathons" (vaginal hysterectomy with prolapse repairs) and a D&C for a uterine polyp... All 3 went beautifully. Kelley is transitioning to Guatemalan "instrumentista" beautifully and the two of us (with her functioning as both scrub tech and first assist the first half of the both vagathons) had a nice little rhythm worked out... don't know many scrub techs who could organize and hand instruments from a limited table while functioning as the ONLY assist on in a vaginal case like that... at home I usually have 3 people to do what Kelley was doing here... did I mention she is awesome??? Has an invite back ANY time! Heidi came in for the repair portion of the cases and has kind of let me just be primary surgeon so far which I have to admit, I kind of love! During other times her and Leisa handled clinic effortlessly despite some of the confusing stories given by our patients! Today we have 2 particularly tough vagathons for prolapse patients that even Dr Hoak, the general surgeon here who is USED to seeing ladies with their girls parts hanging between their legs, deemed impressive! Our one lady has a small grapefruit hanging out which is pretty ulcerated, but we are hoping has enough healthy mucosa to leave her with a functioning vagina. We also scheduled 3 for tomorrow including 2 abdominal hysterectomies for fibroids (1 at 22wk size and one at 36 wk size!) and a vaginal hysterectomy for menorrhagia (heavy bleeding).


Tony is doing well here in Guatemala too... he has been busy playing with kids and catching up on some video editing so far, but plans to do some video of what we are doing and maybe help out Dr Hoak with some things around the apt. I am hoping he is enjoying and finding his niche here a little... I know not speaking the language is tough and I want him to KNOW he is valued here even if he isn't Spanish speaking or medical!


Today we continue in the OR... please pray for our OR patients today and for those recovering... pray especially for these patients to understand where our desire to help them comes from! He is SO good and loves them so much... we want them to understand that! Pray for His continued favor today!!! Thanks guys and God bless!

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