Feliz Dia de la Madre!

 (For any Guatemalan mothers who happen to be reading this-- since today is the day we celebrate Mother's Day in Guatemala)  Rounds were particularly fun this morning after Sarah and I got up early to hit the market and buy some pretty flowers for the patients.  They are all mothers and we got a few smiles out of that-- they are generally quite stoic people here.  The picture here is of Maria, who we discharged this morning as she is doing quite well after a very successful prolapse surgery on Tuesday.

In fact, the really cool thing about this week is that ALL of our patients have done really well post-operatively and they have been very easy to care for.  It is so amazing how little pain medication they take after major surgeries!  There is definitely something to be said for non-overmedicated culture, I am sure...

The coolest thing we have done this week, though (for Sarah and I who are really teachers at heart) is work with Dra. Lindsey Rodriguez, who some of you know through the years as the young lady that worked for years with Agape and was helped through medical school by them eventually.  She now works with them up in Quiche with her husband Paul.  She is interested in maybe doing an OB/GYN residency now, and is doing some training now to learn to do C-sections eventually.  She was a great help  on the vaginal cases Tuesday, then yesterday the cases were all abdominal so we handed her the scalpel for, I'm pretty sure, the first time ever!  She said they would never let her do anything like that in medical school here.  She did a great job both opening and closing and left with a huge smile on her face, much to our delight. There is another picture of the three of us down at the bottom-- note that I posted a "bloodless" version of the picture for those of you with weak stomachs this time ;-)

It has also been really great working with Don and Marianne McLeod again this week.  They are here from the Atlanta area and make a great husband-wife team as he is an anesthesiologist and she is an experienced OR nurse!  Don is able to save us a looooooooooottt of money by providing anesthesia this week and next for Tom, and Marianne has such a heart for helping Alma and Angelica out in the OR and really giving them a lot more breaks than they would usually get in a week like this.  With Don's regional anesthesia skills, we have only had one surgery under general anesthesia this week-- this contributed a lot to how quickly they were "up and at 'em" and being discharged after their major surgeries.  Here they are showing off their posts in the OR.  (They also happen to be AMAZING cooks, which explains why no blogging was happening last night... straight to bed after dinner for me!)

The next picture is just where the ladies sell their flowers on the church steps every market day-- a truly beautiful sight here in Chichi.  I put it in as a reminder of some of the patients we especially need to be praying for:  Oralia who had a great surgery but doesn't know Christ, and Mikaela who is about 4-5 weeks pregnant and truly miserable after her surgery and with her severe nausea.  I checked all around this morning but very little is available for nausea in pregnancy here so prayer it is!  She begged to go home today where she can be more comfortable in her house but I know she really feels horrible.

  

We are still ironing out the details for our plans tomorrow, but will definitely be coming home on Saturday to our friends and families!  Tom is operating today and part of tomorrow and Sarah is helping him (and benefitting from his amazing patience and teaching skill)  Thank you all for your prayers and support this week.