Yep, clinic is longer when you start a day late!

So today was the first day of clinic for this week, which is weird since usually I do clinic on Sunday and start operating on Monday with more patients in between.  Having gotten off to a late start made for a long clinic day today, but was certainly well worth it.  (For those of you who don't know, I came down a day late because my father passed away last Monday and we held his funeral on Saturday...)

I think the final total today was 26 patients, which was about four more than I have seen in a single day in this setting previously... Thank goodness for the amazing help of Dra. Lindsey Rodriguez (yes, the same Dra. Lindsey that was in medical school when Matt and I lived here!  Now practicing and incredibly smart...) and a local health promoter who works with Health Talents Intl., Cesy.  Cesy was especially helpful since she speaks the local Mayan language as well.

I'll try to get a better picture of them tomorrow-- this is the best I did today!

Some of the clinic highlights and prayer requests from today:

1. Please pray for Manuela, our third patient today-- who has inoperable cervical cancer!  Always a hard way to start a clinic day, but definitely a joy to be able to embrace the family, pray with them, and hear how she knows the Lord and has security in her salvation.  She is currently without pain or bleeding, but that is unlikely to last for long.

2.  We scheduled four surgeries (yes, only four out of 26!)-- which is weird, but at least we were able to give a lot of reassuring reports and options to patients today.  Giving good news or palatable options to patients is always a joy.

3.  Three of the four surgeries we scheduled are abdominal cases-- which are much easier to do with less experienced help (such as Dra. Lindsey and Cesy), and also MUCH better for teaching those new to the OR since they will be able to see so much better.  How cool is God to arrange that?! ;-)

4.  Another highlight for today was seeing a patient that Dr. Tom Hoak (the North American general surgeon who works here more often than I do) and I have been basically working up over the internet for the last couple of months, asking the local missionary Sally York to get the labs and studies we felt we needed and reviewing the results.  I even got several radiologists who I met on physician mom groups on facebook to look at her CT scan for me.  We will take her to the OR tomorrow to remove two very large ovarian cysts (20 cm each or so...) and continue to try to figure out what the problem is with her blood and spleen as time goes on.

5.  I'll leave you with an uplifting story from The Church, which we hear far too few of these days!  There was a sweet, very old, "little old lady" brought in today by the wife of the pastor of the Methodist church in their town.  The lady is not a Christian, but this pastor's wife has been evangelizing to her and became aware of her health complaints.  She turned out not to have anything horribly wrong with her, but this lady from the church-- which the patient doesn't even attend!-- sat with her all day long waiting on her consult to help translate and make sure she got the care she needed.  This is what we are called to do, fellow brothers and sisters in Christ!  So it was fun to see it done correctly today, another small gift that God sent us to get us through a busy day.

Tomorrow we will start in the OR, with a vaginal hysterectomy, the removal of the two large cysts, and an abdominal hysterectomy.  Wednesday so far we have an abdominal cystectomy planned for a teratoma.  We'll see what else shows up in clinic tomorrow, which we will run between surgeries.