Wrapping up at the hospital

Well, no major disasters yesterday, but we did manage to spend nearly five hours seeing about eight patients... and four of those were post-op patients from last trip who looked great!  One other was a young couple struggling with infertility who brought some lab results back for us to review and to discuss next steps.

My "favorite" patient (I know I'm not supposed to have those...) was the daughter of Anastacia, the patient who I operated on in August and who made me the personalized bag that I so cherish...

Her daughter is 23 weeks pregnant and was here for prenatal care.  The more surprising thing, though, was that Anastacia herself was carrying a 2 month old baby with her... and said it was hers and not a grandbaby as I had assumed... Being fairly certain I had removed her uterus about six months ago (and then checking my records to confirm that before asking...), I was a bit baffled!  Turns out, of course, that this baby was not hers "by blood", but she had taken the baby in because the father had died and the mother had no means of supporting her.  So this beautiful little girl gets a new chance at life through adoption... just like we do when we are adopted in to God's family as His children.

Last night we had the third of four of us sort of get the "rest of the way" sick-- Amanda went to bed around 3 or 4 o'clock and hasn't really gotten up yet!  Thankfully Nick is here and has already had the virus that he shared with her, so I'm keeping away the best I can!  Turns out he has gotten to play not only Physical Therapist and surgeon (!) this week, but nurse as well... Probably not exactly as he had planned.

Yesterday we sent our first two surgical patients home, and we will hopefully send one more home today.  The one that we had to operate on abdominally has been predictably a little slower to bounce back (score another one for minimally invasive surgery!) and will probably be tomorrow or so and left under Tom Hoak's awesome care from here.

Today we will likely still see a few patients in clinic although we packed up all our supplies last night since we hadn't planned to, then hang out in market for a bit if Amanda's feeling up to it.  Then we will fly out to Canilla, Guatemala, to check in with our dear friends the Fickers there!  Seeing them is always a highlight of my trip.  Apparently the hospital they are building there is under ROOF now, which is just amazing.  Can't wait to see it!

Gotta share a few pics before I sign off this morning-- Dr. Johnstone with the granddaughter and namesake of our first patient, Rodas... (how many doctors does it take to figure out how to not display this sideways?!?!?  Apparently, more than one at least...)

And me trying to get the whole family to participate in a photo with Rodas... There is actually a good shot of this crowd floating around somewhere, but I'll have to find it on someone else's phone later it seems!

God bless you all and keep praying for these patients please!!