First Day in Clinic

So, it occurs to me now that the second post of the trip is almost always called, “Long Clinic Day” or something of the sort… and today is no exception, of course!  We started our day around 7 with the trip to the grocery store we missed out on last night.  Then we got fully started in clinic by about 9, finishing up tonight around 6:40.  Not the worst day I’ve had by far, but still pretty long!

We only saw a total of 24 patients, but we hear there are lots more coming tomorrow!  We also only scheduled 5 surgeries so far, which we hope increases also. Tomorrow we will begin with two big hysterectomy cases and a smaller biopsy case.

There were a lot of great patients in clinic to pray for today, though—my two favorites (I know I’m not supposed to have those… 😉) were on opposite ends of the spectrum—the first was a sweet lady that had been told she had very large fibroids and needed surgery.  When we told her that her fibroids were actually quite small, she was 100% convinced that God had worked a miracle and removed them.  She said they were all the way up to the top of her stomach, which I’ve definitely seen, but not today!  She literally wailed her gratitude out loud (very loud, actually) and was unbelievably relieved.  It is such a privilege to be able to give great news!

The other lady, sweet Maria… can you please pray for her with us?  She was diagnosed in June with endometrial (uterine) cancer, and has traveled all over the place looking for care.  Quiche sent her to Quetzaltenango, Quetzaltenango sent her to the cancer hospital in Guatemala City, the cancer hospital sent her back to Quetzaltenango and said she needed surgery, Quetzaltenango sent her back to The City for a CT scan, then scheduled her surgery.  Then postponed it.  TWICE already.  Once because they had too many patients scheduled or something, and once because the doctors were in some kind of meeting?  She is currently scheduled for December 2^nd.  I’ll be a little surprised if she lives that long, to be honest.  She appears to have quite a bit of cancer in her belly, and definitely has metastatic disease that we don’t know the extent of.

Unfortunately, she has more disease than we are capable of operating on as general OB/Gyns—we debated this long and hard, but eventually had to come down to “first, do no harm”—we would definitely rather leave the patient the same instead of worse!  Hard to turn them down, but they were so gracious and understanding—almost made it worse.  We prayed with them; they are in a good church and have faith that whatever happens is God’s plan.

The only thing we were able to offer her was a little bit of help for her anemia.  Y’all, her hemoglobin was 5!!!  Usually here in the mountains, 14 is even on the low side.  So since I’m O negative, I could at least offer her a bag of blood.  The lab technician was kind enough to come in to our clinic to collect the blood while we kept seeing patients, so that worked out nicely… At least she can have a little more energy for a bit.  We also gave her meds to try and control her bleeding and some iron to help build her back up.  These are the hard parts of medicine whether here or in the US, though. 

So please pray for sweet Maria.  She and her husband are so sweet and adorable in their tattered clothes but beautiful souls.  And pray for us as we face another very busy day tomorrow in the OR and seeing the 15 or so patients that got turned away this morning to come back tomorrow… fingers crossed for good rest tonight and some more surgeries to schedule tomorrow!