We are always thankful to arrive safely here in Chichi, and always thoroughly exhausted by the time that we do! Today’s travels started around 3:30 am from Greenville and got us here to the apartment around 7pm.
Anyone who has been following along with us for a while will be familiar with Dr. Christina Schwering (used to be DeLuca) and her new Husband Tony, who are here with me again. We are also excited to have Joey Chow, a fourth year medical student from ECU, with us for this trip. She is planning to go in to a combined Emergency and Internal Medicine residency. After working with us in Chichi, she will stay in Antigua at language school for a week before flying down to Nicaragua to meet up with another group from ECU headed by Drs. Jack Rose and Harry Adams. What a great month to have just before returning for Match Day!
I wasn’t sure what to expect in customs with the new president in power, but hoped and prayed for the best as always. Chris, Tony, and Joey all went straight through (as soon as they were satisfied that Chris and Tony weren’t with the large medical group with bags identical to theirs and clearly marked “medical missions”, that is!) I got my bags X-rayed but apparently they weren’t bothered by the several hundred suture needles or anything else in there so that was good.
As usual, we have no idea what we will see when patients start coming in tomorrow. We are hopeful to have 3 or 4 patients that we asked to come back show up for the appointments we gave them in November, so we will see. One of the ladies that needs surgery for an ovarian mass is an old regular patient and friend of ours from the Chicabracan clinic—Felipa Lopez Vicente is the sister of our brittle diabetic friend Ana from there. Ana is the patient who had eye surgery by some team years ago and apparently was told that she should always wear the sunglasses they gave her then. So she does. Always. I’ve never seen her take them off. You’ve probably seen her in some of our pictures in years past. I really hope Felipa shows up.
The other big news from Chichi is that internet and phone services are no longer available, apparently for the next two years. Some kind of scuffle between the Latins and the Mayans somehow led to that; I’m hoping Tom can shed some more light on it when he comes up tomorrow! So our internet is going to be either internet cafes or by cellular modems that we can purchase here. Not sure how great upload speed is going to be so you might not here as much from us this week as usual. Pictures might not be plentiful either, but we’ll give it a try.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support—We’ll try to keep you posted!
No comments:
Post a Comment