Replacements not identified, you ask? Yes, we thought we had worked all that out, but a last minute change of plans left us looking again. We are in the process of working with some folks to make that happen and we ask for lots of prayers for guidance, wisdom, and clarity - not just for us but for everyone involved.
So clinic this morning was a combination gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, and dermatology test. Luckily, Heidi's pretty well trained for the first two. The other two we've learned a lot about since we've been here, but we still ask for help every now and then.
We have an American dermatologist we consult with by email and will be sending some pics that way very shortly. See the first two here for a preview of that.
Also, it seems like Isaac wasn't the only kid in this area to have had diarrhea in the last week. So we treated a bunch of that. Isaac's seems to have passed (no pun intended) so he's in a little better mood now. We can only hope that all the other kids have similar luck.
And there were the standard pre-natal patients and several with some questions about their periods. Women here tend not to know terribly much about periods for a couple of reasons. One is that there are a lot of cultural misconceptions about periods that are pretty persistent. There is the belief that if you do not have your period for a few months and you're not pregnant, it'll start coming out of your nose.
Another reason women don't know too much about periods is that they don't have many in their lives compared to American women. It's usually not too long after a girls starts getting her period that she gets married and pregnant. Then, after giving birth, women usually breastfeed for two years, thus suppressing more periods. Shortly after they start up again, there's another baby on the way. This more or less continues through their reproductive lives until a fairly early menopause - again, at least by American standards.
So we get a lot of questions. Again, Heidi's pretty well qualified to answer these and Matt's becoming a lot more knowledgeable about this stuff than he ever wanted to be - at least in Spanish. Who knows what he knows about this stuff in English?!
The third pic is of a really cute kid we just happened to take a picture of. Hard to resist, huh?
This afternoon we played with Isaac a lot (since he was more or less ignored during clinic this morning - thank God for Baby Einstein DVDs and laptop computers) and answered a bunch of emails. Oh, and Matt spent some more time with the builders on the expansion project.
Matt is already planning a short return trip to Guatemala in September to help another missionary family get set-up here. Read about THEIR adventures here:
http://www.allisonfamilyinguat.blogspot.com
Tomorrow, Matt will make an early morning run to Nueva Santa Catarina to supervise the initial digging on the foundation for the new church there. Roy's group, Savior's Sons, is planning to start laying block for the walls when they come down in less than a month. So we've got a lot of work to do before then! Matt will try to make sure we're at least digging in the right spot.
Tomorrow afternoon, Heidi has a clinic in the hospital here next door. This is pretty unusual, since we don't work there, but it's a follow-up clinic for the patients the Women's Team operated on a few weeks ago. Most of the patients went home with catheters, so we hope that those are all cleared up now.
Wednesday morning, Matt will be recording with the church group near Los Encuentros. Thursday is ASELSI and Friday is Heidi's OB/GYN clinic in Chichi. Then it's back out to Canilla again.
No comments:
Post a Comment