Weekend

Early Saturday morning, we loaded up and headed for Canilla. Ken had ridden from Canilla to Antigua with Matt earlier in the week, so it was his second time there (and his second time on some pretty typical Guatemalan roads) but it was Suzy's first visit to Canilla and her first view of the roads we drive every week. She mentioned that the whole head-slamming-off-the-car-roof thing wasn't really her favorite. Go figure.

The girls took care of clinic while the guys worked to finish a new room on the front of the clinic building (laying tile, hanging a door, some minor woodwork, etc.). Suzy was a big help. Since we see tons of sick kids, it was nice to have a pediatrician around.

After lunch, we all hopped on 4-wheelers and motorcycles and rode down to the river to play some 6 on 6 sand volleyball. Does it sound like there's not normally that many people there? That's because Ryan, Katie, Jacob, and Hannah all came in. They'll be here for a couple weeks which means that all of the Fickers were here for Mothers' Day! (That's also why we were working to finish the new room. Jacob has to have someplace to sleep!)

Today was clinic in San Andres. It went faster than usual because we had Hannah's help. She's really learning a lot in PA school.

Matt and Isaac went over to the Torre Fuerte Church to help hook up their new sound system. Matt had gone over a few months ago to hook things up correctly (it was a little Guatemalan-ized) but a new sound console came in. Of course, they had undone all of the work that Matt did last time, sucking out all of the power he unlocked that time, but we'll see how this iteration goes.

Anyway, in clinic, we saw a set of twins last week - a boy and a girl. The boy is doing okay, but the girl is basically being starved by the family. The dad more or less demanded milk last week. We weighed the kids and told them to come back in two weeks and we'd take a look at it. Well, they came back after one week and the boy has gained some weight but the girl hasn't. He was sleeping, contentedly, and his sister was screaming because she was hungry. Which is hard to understand, since she had a whole bottle full of coffee to drink! Anyway, that puts us in a really bad position. We decided to give them milk, but there's a very good chance that all of the milk will go to the brother, but what can you do?

We also had a very difficult case in a woman who delivered a pre-term baby two years ago and hasn't had a period since. She tried birth control pills, which can generally force a period, but still with no luck. Most likely, something went wrong that cost her her fertility. She's young and has no living children. Unfortunately, we don't really have very good news for her. Yes, even in a country where it seems like everyone is hyper-fertile, there are still those who struggle with infertility.

Another woman we've been trying to help for a few weeks came in. She has four kids and home and is about to deliver her fifth. Unfortunately, her husband has told her that she's being turned out of the house. He no longer has any interest in her. So we wanted to give her 100 lbs of corn to help out a little. She lives a two hour bus ride plus a one hour walk from clinic, her biggest child weighs about 30 lbs, and she was starting to have contractions today in clinic, so we couldn't really expect her to carry any of the corn home. Our translator remembered that the local church has a truck that's to be used for situations like this, so our friend Juanito came over and drove her, her kids, and her newly acquired corn back to her house. Juan confirms that she's in a pretty bad spot. It's not much of a house that they live in and she's about to have even less than that, plus a new baby, so we feel like helping her with some food is really the right thing to do.

All that, a broken arm, and about 70 more patients makes a full clinic day.

Now for pictures. The first pic is of Ken and Suzy in the airplane on their way to Guatemala City. Ken has been in a lot of small planes before, as he has a friend who is a charter pilot. He also wants to go to flight school, so Duane gave him Lesson 1 today and helped him fly to the City. We're told that Ken has some potential!

The next pic is of Ryan holding Jacob and Matt holding Isaac in the chicken yard collecting some eggs for breakfast. When you only have one hand each to work with, teamwork helps a bit.

Third is a shot of Isaac and Jacob. Isaac turned 10 months old today and Jacob is nearly five months old.

Next is a shot of the facial expression of the week for Isaac. Why, we have no idea. That's just his favorite face to make this week.

And lastly is Isaac playing in the grass outside the house inspecting some microscopic thing he managed to get between his thumb and forefinger.

Tomorrow is clinic in Chicabracan. It's our first time there in quite a while without any help. Isaac can now crawl and pull up on things, so it's likely to be... er... interesting. Wish us luck.