We've given all of our chronic patients enough meds to last until the end of September, at which point we hope to have someone to go out again and see them. We're working on that.
The "shortcut" road there, which runs through Totonicapan, was absolutely brutal. Yes, the Toyota is practically indestructible, but WE'RE not! After about 30 minutes on the road, we decided to take the long way around on the way back, construction delays or not. Knowing that this could add hours to an already long day did not matter. You can only get beat up for so long!
We left home at 6am, arriving in Nueva Santa Catarina just before 8am. There were about two patients there. So we spent a little time loading in and talking about the construction project. Patients began to trickle in. We don't control the numbers there, so we have no idea how many patients we saw, but we left around noon.
Usually, when we have an extraordinarily long day ahead and we know that it would be helpful to be out of clinic by a certain time, it lasts about three hours longer than that. So we had hoped to be out by noon, but knew in our hearts it would be more like 3pm. So noon was pretty exciting!
We took the long way home, driving all the way down to Los Encuentros, then up through Chichi. But miracle of miracles, there were NO construction delays and it took us just over 2 hours to make the trip - only about 20-30 minutes more than the "shortcut" and not nearly as abusive. Oh well.
At this point, Isaac had spent four hours in the car and four hours in his pack-n-play. His ideal is zero for each one. Yet, he was being pretty tolerant. Good thing, too, because we had another four hours in the car to go!
We drove two vehicles down to Guatemala City, in order to leave one for Russell, Bethany, and Tye, who fly in on Thursday. The downside of this is that with Heidi in the Toyota with Isaac, she had no help with him and had to just keep handing animal crackers, toys, and sippy cups back to him for four entire hours!
In the continuing saga of fighting mechanical problems, the Mazda has developed a seal leak where the drive shaft connects to the rear differential. We stopped in Los Encuentros to see if a mechanic there could check our rear differential and fill it, if necessary (the nut was on there too tightly to get it off with the tools we had). 20 minutes, Q20 for labor and Q20 for oil later (about $5 total), we were on our way with a full differential. Guess we'll call our go-to-guy, Martin, when we get home.
Yesterday was full of doctors' appointments and lab tests (all routine stuff, no worries) and getting copies of all of our medical records from here in Guatemala. Then we went to Dr. Hoak's house in San Cristobal for dinner. We are really going to miss them!!!
Today we'll run up to the Hospital San Juan de Dios to try to find Ramiro, our little spina bifida baby, and get his parents a little more walking around town money. They've been here three weeks now on less than $100.
Then we'll go pick up some friends from the airport and head back up the mountain.
The pic below is of the first stage of the construction at Nueva Santa Catarina. Many thanks to Roy Simmons and the Savior's Sons group for funding this project!
2 comments:
come home soon. We miss you!! Safe travels!
So happy for all the people in Nueva Santa Catarina! Their strong faith and dedication is a blessing and it was an honor to have had the chance to meet them. They are very deserving of the new facility and hope they will always remember the caring and faith that you brought to them.
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