Meet the Team!

Wow!  I can’t wait to see what God has in store for the group of people we have down here this week!  It is something new every time and every trip, and this trip is, of course, no different.  So here goes the obligatory “meet the team” post…

For those of you who are completely new readers, first of all—welcome!  And thanks for following along!  I am Heidi Bell, an OB/GYN from Greenville, North Carolina.  My husband Matt and I lived here in Guatemala as missionaries from 2006-2008 .   Since then, I’ve been extremely blessed to be able to continue coming down every quarter to serve in Chichicastenango for a week.  We mostly provide gynecological surgeries, but also take care of quite a few chronic patients with fertility and bleeding concerns.  As long as God keeps providing, we plan to keep coming.  The amount of support—in prayers, money, donated supplies and equipment, and TIME—has been nothing short of overwhelming over the last 4 and ½ years.

Traveling with me on this trip are Karen Carr and Nicole Jacobs, friends from work and Integrity Church.  They are good friends with each other, and had each been talking about wanting to come down to Guatemala with me individually before we found out we all knew each other.  Karen took her first plane flight with Nicole in 2007, and today got her first passport stamp with her also! 

Karen is a Spanish interpreter at the hospital where I work, and truly has a love of the language.  I’m excited to learn from her this week, and excited about the love and energy that she will certainly exude in the clinics here just like she does at home.  God really seems to be growing her heart for missions, and I look forward to seeing how He works through her this week!  (He is currently blessing me through her in the form of her making up my bed for me while I type ;-)

Nicole teaches Special Education at home, and has a beautiful heart for the Lord.  I also found out tonight that she has had some nursing school, so I can’t wait to get her to work on blood pressures, fingerstick blood sugars, and whatever else she dreams up to do.  Her husband, Brian, works out at the gym with Matt (my husband), and we all go to Church together.  I’m also planning to get Nicole and Karen to scrub in to the OR with me and help (since I will need some help!), so I hope that doesn’t scare them off too badly!

We are also meeting Dan Singleton, a soon-to-be-graduating Family Practice resident who works with Chris Schwering, and a friend of his who is an Emergency Medicine physician also.  They are coming up tomorrow, so more on them later.

Mark Snoddy and his son (also Mark Snoddy) are also down here for two weeks, and I’ve been tasked with “putting Mark to work” and getting his feet wet in medicine, which he thinks he might be developing an interest in.  He’s currently in college, and we are looking forward to having a lot of fun teaching and working with him.  His Dad is a strong supporter of the hospital here (his grandparents essentially built the place!) and serves on the Board of Directors for the “Good Samaritan Hospital” where we will be working on the U.S. side.  It is always a pleasure to hang out with him.  He has been such a blessing to Tom and so many others over the years!

Also for the new readers, “Tom” is Dr. Tom Hoak, a general surgeon from the U.S. who lives down here full-time with his wife Jana.  They have just sent their last daughter off to college this past year, and are working down here “until God sends us somewhere else”, as they will tell you.  They are a continuous inspiration to me, and it is always good to see them and get to work with Tom again!

Pictures below are of Nicole, then Karen, then our attempt at a group photo-- hopefully we will do better tomorrow!

Wrapping Up...

Well, with all of our patients doing well and no one in our group very sick or completely broke, I think we are wrapping up a really great week!  Still plenty of surgeries to scrub in to with Tom, and Nichelle and Kimberly are headed to Lake Atitlan for the weekend to catch up with some buddies from Chapel Hill (Turns out it really IS a small world, after all!)  (Oh-- and don't worry, mothers who are reading this.  We have hired safe, private transportation that will take them to trustworthy hotels, and left them with a working cell phone!)

I continue to be amazed with how well our patients do post-operatively here.  The only one still with us-- and she might go home this afternoon if her intestines "wake up" a little bit--  had an 8 pound, 4 oz uterus removed on Tuesday.  All the others have already gone home looking great.  The people here are amazingly tough and resilient.  You really get some perspective on nuisance problems in the first world when you see people truly struggling to feed their families and put shoes on their feet.

Today, we are back and forth to the OR with Tom (essentially taking turns taking advantage of his amazing teaching in the OR) and hanging out in the market.  Hale, Elizabeth, and I fly out to the City and then to the States with Duane and then American Airlines tonight.  Hale has been shooting pictures like crazy in the market, so we will probably have more to share soon!  We also have some beautiful shots of our precious patients to share as soon as I can hook his camera up to my computer again.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of those that we love and miss-- we will see you soon!  Thank you for all the love and prayers this week and always.

Mostly pictures (written last night, but apparently forgot to his "publish" til this morning...)

Sorry, today was actually a much calmer day, but we really let time get away from us-- and after dinner, we talked Tom in to getting out his photos from so many of the patients he has taken care of over the years down here and couldn't pull ourselves away!  We are now up way too late, but with our heads spinning with amazing stories of what The Lord has done down here through his hands.  

We did get a chance to snap a few more pictures today to share, though.  The first one speaks to the universality of little kids putting things up their noses... just because they can!  This girl was irresistibly cute, and entertaining herself quite effortlessly while her parents were praying at the front steps of the church.  Hopefully they were praying that nothing got stuck up there!

Here is one shot of the hospital from the outside for those of you who haven't seen it before.  It translates to "The Good Samaritan Hospital".  One of my favorite quotes of the week is that every time Hale looks up at more power lines, he shakes his head and just says, "good thing concrete doesn't burn!"  It is amazing that very few injuries or fires are caused by these, but we did have one guy come in to the ER today with electrical burns from touching a steel pole from a live wire to his stomach!  Tom will be taking care of him for a while... so if you need someone else to put on your prayer list, he could probably use it!

Apparently, these pictures upload in no particular order ;-)  Here is one of the catholic church here in town... just another nice shot of Hale's from the week.

As a teacher, this is one of my favorite pictures, although you can't see that it is Hale that Nichelle is looking up to for further guidance during her first ever hysterectomy.  I just love that expectant and "drinking it all in" look of a truly interested and bright student.  I know it's kind of dorky to be in to that kind of thing, but I think it will always be what really makes me tick in the OR!

Another favorite shot from the week... Hale operating with his daughter Elizabeth!  You might recall she is a college senior at Carolina, considering (hopefully now more than ever!) a career in medicine like Dad.  It was really cool to see their father-daughter relationship this week and how much they respect and love each other.  I will pray that Matt and Micah someday have that, and I have really been inspired by it this week.

And one last one before I am off to bed... another uterus we took out, this time with the whole team (except we couldn't get Al convinced to pose with us...)  That's Angelica (left) and Alma (right), the Guatemalan scrub nurses who run the OR here.  They are such gracious hosts-- always happy to see us come even though it means a really, really, really long week of work for them!  They even remember my glove size from one trip to the next, and I am continuously flattered that they send family members to see us for consults almost every trip.  God bless the hard-working staff at this hospital!  It is truly unique and blessed place in His world.

Oops, I lied-- HERE is the "one last shot" for the day... I don't think I can even do justice to a caption for this one, so I'll just let it sink in...

Finally figured out how to post pictures more efficiently...

One of my favorite "little old Guatemalan lady" pictures of all time... thanks to Hale Stephenson!

The sound of women's hand shaping tortillas is ubiquitous on any Guatemalan street...

Beautiful flowers for sale in the market... Couldn't resist buying them for about $1.30!

 Our clinic room.  There's a nicer ultrasound we can use across the courtyard in another room, but this one works in a pinch!

 Our "own" shelf in the storage room.  How amazing to have such a well-stocked clinic here! Thanks to all who have donated-- from clinic nurses who squirrel away expired meds to Keith Nelson buying us a scale to bring down to my in-laws stocking us up with donated glucose testing supplies from friends and family, to Hale bugging the hospital and drug reps for supplies, to students gathering them up over the years, to the ladies at the SurgiCenter in Greenville and their ongoing efforts to "waste not, want not", it is amazing how it all adds up!

One of our favorite shots of the week... Nichelle trying to overcome the language barrier to teach a patient how to arch her back out for the anesthesiologist to put a spinal anesthetic in...

More pictures!

Kimberly doing consults in clinic

Sweet little girl that we couldn't resist flirting and sharing bubbles with...

"Slightly" staged OR picture after we had just gotten the uterus out...  Heidi and Nichelle

 Kimberly's first skin incision!

And the team's first uterus of the week!  Ain't she a beauty?! ;-)

Highlights Only Tonight...

OK, so the last two days have been a little crazy-busy, but overall really great!  We have had six successful surgeries and have seen another 26 patients in clinic.  Nothing very serious in clinic, but a lot of chances to provide reassurance and guidance for young women, which is a great privilege.

Last night we did not have internet access (I know, "first world problems"...), but we did sit around as a very tired group and just typed up the few highlights below.  Now I am finally getting around to posting them for your reading pleasure...

• ·      5 am, “quiquiriqui!!!”  (That’s cock-a-doodle-do in Spanish… our wake-up call)
• ·      Nichelle and Kimberly each got to do their first skin incisions and abdominal closures
• ·      Kimberly also got to do half of a hysterectomy!
• ·      Elizabeth scrubbed in to her first surgery!  (And did great!)
• ·      All three of our surgeries went well and are expected to recover well!
• ·      We saw 9 patients in clinic
• ·      We got to show a young couple their baby’s heartbeat for the first time (7 and 2/7 weeks!)
• ·      The Guatemalan OR team did a fantastic job working as a team to help us emergently convert a vaginal case to an abdominal case quickly and safely. 
• ·      Jana made an amazing pizza dinner, which just hit the spot when we got out of the OR around 7 pm
• ·      Limes were successfully purchased in the market by Kim and Elizabeth, who also managed not to get lost many times going to the market by themselves
• ·      At least three patients had their cell phones ring during their consults today—a growing issue! 
• ·      We got to see a patient for a follow-up visit whose hysterectomy we did in 2010!  She looks great, and is still grateful and appreciative
• ·      No one is very sick on this trip currently
• ·      We are looking forward to operating on three more special ladies tomorrow.
• ·      We’ve seen lots of women who came in with very supportive husbands for their consults, which is always positive to see
•       We took lots more great pictures in the OR, which we will try to share as soon as the internet is fast enough to upload them!

Today, one of the best highlights was our first patient, who came in because she was told she needed a D and C for a miscarriage.  When we went to ultrasound her, however, we were able to show her what appeared to be a normally growing baby inside with a very early heartbeat!  As I always teach the students and residents that I work with, we "always give the pregnancy the benefit of the doubt" when it comes to very early diagnosis of miscarriages and other pregnancy mishaps.   It was another in a very long list of great teaching points for all of us learners on this trip.

Tom and I actually got called to the OR around 9:30 last night to an incarcerated hernia case, and got out just after midnight-- so I was even more thankful for an upbeat, energetic, and helpful team today.  I continue to be amazed by the talent levels of all of the people I am working with, and will of course never cease to be amazed by the patience, gentleness, and generosity of the Guatemalan people that I am so privileged to serve.

II am now going to attempt to post some more pictures, but I have learned the hard way this week to go ahead and post the text first then try to deal with the pictures; internet has been sketchy for posting large files lately! 

Good night to all-- and thanks for reading and praying for us!

Pictures... Finally!

Great First Day in Clinic!

Wow.  Just wow.  I can't believe how great today was.  All of the talented people that I had to work with, and all of the really interesting patient stories, and fun time in the market, and, and, and... wow.  I truly am in awe of this team and the amazingly strong people here in Guatemala.  It's pretty late after going through all of Hale's pictures from today, eating pizza, getting things cleaned and ready for tomorrow, and not to mention seeing the 20 clinic patients that we saw today, so just a few quick stories and prayer requests will have to suffice for the blog tonight.

Our first patient today was Tomasa, the lady I mentioned before who has been waiting for someone that can do her abdominal sacrocolpopexy for about a year now.  She is first on the schedule for tomorrow! The really cool part of her story, though, is that when we first operated on her about 18 months ago, she was in the "Catholic" church here (although basically unchurched) and did not know Christ.  Her daughter that was with her, however, was and still is in a strong Evangelical/Protestant church, and was really excited when we brought up the subject with her mother as she has been praying for her to come to know Christ for quite some time.  Sometime since her last surgery, she has actually started going to church with her daughter, who believes that she is really coming close to accepting The Lord lately!  I am truly awed, once again, with the amazing privilege of being able to serve these women regularly and provide continuity of care-- over years in several cases!-- that allows me to see them grow in so many ways.  God is so good.

We saw a total of 20 patients, scheduled six surgeries, and did three in-office biopsy procedures today already.  Almost all of the surgeries will be great teaching/student cases, which is really exciting for Kim, Nichelle, and Elizabeth.  Hale did a fantastic job of teaching them during clinic today while I was writing notes, and I pray that they will truly have a great learning experience this week!

Apparently, we did take a little long in the clinic, though-- one lady told the front desk that she was 31 when she walked in and asked for her consult, but then told us she was 32 when we started her consult in the afternoon!  We didn't realize we were going THAT slowly, but then another patient's husband also told us "buenas NOCHES" on the way out!  Oh well, at least we finished by eight...

Unfortunately, we also told two patients that they likely have cancer-- one that we are operating on Tuesday and one that is sadly inoperable.  Please pray for Juana and Maria, who are both in tough situations, with vulvar and cervical or maybe vaginal cancers.  It is so difficult to feel so helpless for really sick patients sometimes, but I am thankful that we at least had some pretty good pain medication to offer to Maria thanks to donors in the U.S. who have generously given of loved one's medications after their passing and/or no longer needing them.  Prayer and pain medication were all we had for Maria, but we pray it will go a long way towards making her feel a little more cared for than she otherwise would have.

Tomorrow we are doing Tomasa's abdominal case, another abdominal hysterectomy, then a vaginal hysterectomy and incontinence procedure.  We have three cases scheduled for Tuesday as well.  We will see what clinic brings us tomorrow-- I sometimes have to remind myself that God will not send us more than we can handle.

 Pictures are from market this morning (I am so impressed with Hale's photography; he has a great eye for it!) and clinic this afternoon, mostly self-explanatory.  Enjoy!  (They may not post until the next post; I am going to go ahead and upload this text now and then try again since they failed last night :-/  (First world problems!)

Meet the team!

Today was, as usual, a long travel day for the team—which is kind of nice since it gives us a chance to start getting to know each other a little bit!  This trip there are two people that I met for the first time at the airport in Raleigh this morning, so it has been an exciting day already.   We are all ready to crash tonight after a long trip to Guatemala via Miami, then up the mountain to Chichicastenango.

Many who have talked to me over the past few weeks know how excited I am about the cool group of people I have on this trip, so let me tell you more about them:

Hale Stephenson is a private OB/GYN in Greenville who I have known since I started with ECU in 2008.  He is a fantastic vaginal surgeon, and I am really excited that he is willing to help with a particular repair for a patient by the name of Tomasa.  I have been trying to find help for for almost a year now!  She needs an abdominal sacrocolpopexy for you GYN types that are reading, but the rest of you will just have to take my word that she needs his help ;-)

I walked up to Hale a few months ago after he gave a lecture to our department about urogynecology, and told him I had a couple of patients I would love for him to see.  He was a little surprised when I admitted that they happened to be in Guatemala, but it didn’t throw him off for long!  Before I knew it, he was signed up for the trip, and brought his daughter along too.

Elizabeth Stephenson, his daughter, is in her last year at Carolina, set to graduate in May.  She is planning to do a fellowship next year that combines some real world work experience with some seminary classes and church leadership in Charlottesville, VA (The Trinity Fellowship for those of you who are familiar).  She is considering applying to medical school after that, so prayers that this week will help her to sort that out would be appreciated!  We weren’t sure we were going to get her down here since she is missing a week of classes, but it turns out her professor adopted her little girl from Guatemala so she had no problem excusing her!  I love when God works things out like that.

Kimberly Newton is a fourth year medical student at Carolina, and the daughter of Ed Newton who I work with at ECU.  I am thrilled to be working with her also, and flattered that Ed has always been excited enough about the work I do down here in Guatemala to get his daughter set up to go with me!  She is actually planning to go in to Family Practice with some further training in obstetrics.  From what I hear, her Spanish is pretty good, too.  I don’t even know what I’m going to do with myself on this team with all of this help—both with Spanish and medical training.  I think Hale is the only one who doesn’t speak a lot of Spanish, but he will more than make up for it in the OR.  I can’t remember the last time I was on a trip with both medical and Spanish-speaking help at the same time!

Nichelle Barbari is a third year medical student with us at ECU, who also goes to Integrity Church with Matt and I.  She is going in to OB, and managed to talk the school in to letting her spend her third year elective rotation time with me.  It makes perfect sense, since she definitely has a heart for missions as well as OB/GYN, but I was still pleasantly surprised that it worked out.  She has actually served as a medical translator in Peru before—talk about a serious talent set! 

We met Al Jones, an anesthesiologist from Wyoming, at the airport and traveled up to Chichi with him today.  He has been down several times helping Tom and is back for a long week this time!  We are always excited to have anesthesia help, as many of you know.  We will look forward to getting to know him better this week also.  The picture below is of Al, Hale, Elizabeth, Kim, Nichelle, and I in that order...

As I said, I am really looking forward to the chance to get to know everyone better as we serve together in Chichi this week.  We will keep you posted.  Please pray that Hale both recovers quickly from his cold and doesn’t pass it along to all of us, and for safe travels, patient spirits, and patients that we can truly bless this week.

Finishing up the week in Canillá

So yesterday we had kind of a full day-- got up, rounded on our remaining patients (one had to go home with a catheter but they all went home and looked good overall), cleaned up our clinic stuff and put it away for another few months, went out to market for a little while while we waited for the anesthesiologist to come and do Tom's cases, then scrubbed with him on a surgery for very dangerous stomach bleeding (the guy really didn't have more than hours or maybe a day or two to live without Tom's intervention), then rushed over to Quiché on a "microbus" or van with 21 total people plus all of our luggage, to get on the plane and fly over to Canillá for the night!  And if you think that sounded like a run-on sentence, you should try getting all of that done in a day.

We were really blessed to be able to fly out to the Fickers's home last night and spend some time with them.  It is always such a treat to introduce them to my friends.  I've really missed them since I didn't get to see them (except for my brief run-in with Katie in the WalMart parking lot) last trip.  It was so nice to catch up and hear about all that is going on out here.  A 24-hour care center/hospital is actually looking like a distinct possibility some day relatively soon if anyone is looking for any great projects to contribute to.  You can read more on Katie's blog at http://katiessoil.blogspot.com -- very exciting!

Last night we all went to bed exhausted-- unfortunately, though, we (or at least Tana and I) got up this morning even more exhausted.  I kept her up most of the night by getting up with a GI illness regularly.  Unfortunately this morning I was pretty dehydrated and ended up spending the day in bed while everyone else went to clinic.  NOT an easy decision for me to make, for I was very grateful for the opportunity.  Sandy, Tana, and Jared did a great job overcoming all of their fears of heights and motion sickness on the Guatemalan mountain dirt roads and seeing patients in clinic.   (Kelley, unfortunately, had to leave yesterday for her flight from The City)

Tomorrow we will get up and help in the clinic here for a little while until it is time to leave for the airport for the long travels home.  We are all so anxious to get back to our families, but with many fond memories of another great trip...

Pictures today are of the Ficker home from the air and our first Guatemalan "paycheck" of the week... a bag of apples from an appreciative patient.

Scene around Guatemala...

(Thanks to Sandy Williams for these lovely shots!)

Great times with the team

So today was a little lower key, but a lot of fun and with a lot of nice opportunities to spend time with our patients.  We sent one of our surgical patients, Juana, home early this morning.  The other patient from Monday, Magdalena, really could use your prayers.  Once in about every five or six patients we operate on for prolapse down here, we will find a patient with trouble emptying her bladder afterwards-- Magdalena was the unfortunate winner of that lottery this time, and we are praying she will not have to go home with a catheter.   She looks great otherwise, though, and is in good spirits which is always a plus.

The other two patients from yesterday look fantastic... totally humbling how the lady with the largest/most painful surgery that we did has simply NOT stopped smiling every time she sees us in the hospital.  I have had the type of pain she is having (very similar to a C-section) and was certainly a lot less positive about it!  You can see the soreness and normal post-op pain on her face if you catch a glimpse of her right before she sees you walk in, but as soon as she sees one of us the smile is plastered back on and she continuously shows her gratitude.  Again, humbling.  She is the one who has been praying for us with her husband ever since we met the other day.  I thought WE were supposed to be here to minister to THEM, right?  I seem to always get that wrong...

After rounds we went down to see about 12 patients in the clinic, which was also a really positive experience. Five of the 19 we have seen the last two days were actually return patients of "mine" who I have been seeing regularly for about a year now.  What an awesome privilege to be able to establish these relationships and follow up with patients regularly.  One young lady, Aracely, would like your prayers for fertility as she struggles with diabetes and polycystic ovarian syndrome.  Another would like your prayers for us to be able to figure out what is causing her not to have cycles.  Both cases were a lot of fun to see with Kelley and Tana today-- I'm not sure which I appreciated more, the chance to walk Kelley through them as good teaching cases or the chance to get great input from Tana about our next steps in management!

We did have one funny, "this-would-soooo-never-happen-in-the-U.S." moment this morning.  About the time we had kind of hit a wall in clinic and were getting a little down with our moods/attitudes, we spotted a pair of panties that a patient had managed to leave on the floor under our exam table!  Really?!  How does one leave the gynecologist's office and not notice that they forgot their panties?!  To be clear to all you strict theologians out there, please understand I am NOT implying that the Holy Spirit wears women's undergarments... but it was a strange and spirit-lifting gift at the time to our team;-)  As I write this, I realize that was probably one of those "you had to be there" stories, but oh well... hope it made someone chuckle at least!

If y'all see my husband, kids, or in-laws this week, please give them extra hugs and love-- I miss them dearly but am so grateful for their support of this mission and our work here.  Could not do it without them at all...

God bless them and you all tonight!

Fun Days in the OR

I know... "fun" is not a word that I usually associate with the operating room, but with the team I'm traveling with this time you can't help but have fun!  We are thrilled to report that all four of our major surgeries have gone really, really well this week and so far all of our patients are also doing well.  Tana and Kelley have done an amazing job adapting to life in the OR in Guatemala and calling for instruments in Spanish.  And Jared even got to scrub in on a case with us this afternoon!

So far we have operated on three women with prolapsed uteri and one with a large uterus that was bleeding and causing pain and anemia.  Three of the four women are actually Christian but have family members who are not, so we can keep praying for them.  One family was actually brought in by our old friend Matilde, the pastor out in Nueva Santa Catarina if any of y'all remember him from years ago.  It was nice to see him again, and I see he is still truly "pastoring his flock" as the people he brought in aren't even in his church.

We are getting ready to head out to dinner, so I want to try to post some pictures before I run out of time...  Some of them are of us playing with the kids that had been waiting with their families all day for  a consult or something at the hospital.  Bubbles are universal fun!

Then there are the OR pictures... the first one is a little staged, but a lot of fun. It's where Tana and I are going to tell people we stepped out to get a soda and left Kelley and Jared in charge for a while!

Here is Kelley, fourth year medical student, making her first ever skin incision.  She did a great job!  WARNING for the really squeamish--  stop scrolling down now... the next one's a little bloody.  The lady we are operating on has prayed for us three times now as we were praying for her, and I'm pretty sure her and her husband stayed up late last night in the hospital also praying for US.  Humbling.  And beautiful.  And another amazing memory to be thankful to God for.  Reminds me once again what an amazing privilege it is to serve Him in this way.

So here is the uterus after we took it out-- Jared probably never imagined that by age 17 he would have assisted with a hysterectomy!  What an amazing memory.  

Prayers

Well, a few prayers answered today and a few a little less so… pretty par for the course in, well, life in general I guess!  For me it is always an answered prayer when someone that I had given an appointment to on an earlier trip does show up again for her surgery, which today was our patient Encarnacion.  She came referred from the Fickers in May for uterine prolapse but we had some other bleeding concerns that we needed to work up first.  She has had all of that done now between us and Tom, so we will operate on her Tuesday! 

The “less answered” prayers category basically means that ALL of our patients today had complete uterine prolapse concerns.  The translation of this is that they all need vaginal surgery and therefore will not be a very good surgical experience for Jared.  I am still hopeful that we will get some good abdominal cases that he can scrub with us on, though.  God is in control!  I had to remind myself a lot of that today…

The coolest part of the day, though, was when He reminded me of that through our first patient.  We spent a long time talking to her about the surgery that she needed and the logistics and all, and then we prayed for her before she left.  She had her husband translating for her since she doesn’t speak Spanish, and at the end of the prayer she was crying.  I was really worried because I thought she was scared, so I was asking why she was crying.  She was embarrassed about it and didn’t want to tell me at first, but she finally confided that she had just had an overwhelming sense of the presence of The Lord as we were praying that made her emotional.  So then we all cried, of course, which got the clinic off to a slow—but lovely!—start for the day.

We ended up only seeing nine patients and scheduling three surgeries today, but again, God is in control and He will send us the patients we need to minister to this week.  Please pray especially for  Juana, Magdalena, and Encarnacion who we will be operating on this week.  They all are Christians, actually, which is a fairly rare way to start out the week down here.  Please also pray especially for Manuela who is not a Christian and who is struggling with infertility that we likely can not help with.  And for Rosario, a sweet lady who came in today feeling that she needed a good check-up since she has been worried about damage that could have been done when she was raped while in the United States several years ago.  We heard a lot of sad stories today, and are all going to bed thankful for our loving homes and families and our comfy beds, full bellies, and warm showers.

The pictures above (I do not have enough patience with this slow internet connection to figure out how to get them to not be in the middle of the post; sorry!) are the very first patient who made us all cry, the team (as promised from yesterday--Tana, Sandy, Jared, me/Heidi, and Kelley), most of the team with one of the patients that we are hoping to operate on in the future (we diagnosed her diabetes today), and Tana and I with sweet Encarnacion, which we promise we didn't take JUST to make ourselves feel tall! 

Meet the Team

(Written and posted yesterday, or so I thought until I opened the blog tonight and didn't see it there! Sorry...)

Today was, as always on the first Saturday of these trips, a loooooong travel day.  We left around 3 am, and I was very blessed to be greeted by some very good-natured travel buddies even at that horrendous hour!  I’m so excited about the team that we are traveling with this time, so here’s a quick introduction for those of you following along.

There’s “me”, of course—Heidi Bell, an OB/GYN at East Carolina University and co-author of this blog for six years now!  My husband initially started it in 2006 when we moved down and served as full-time medical missionaries in (Santa Cruz del Quiché) Guatemala for two years.  Since our return to the US in 2008, I have been extremely blessed to have the opportunity to continue making these trips every three months to serve at the hospital in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.  What an amazing gift!

Tana Hall, MD, is a colleague of mine from ECU OB/GYN and one of my best friends and strongest prayer partners in the whole wide world.  She is a very talented young physician that I was privileged to know as a resident and now am even more privileged to work with as a faculty colleague.  Her heart for teaching and her dedication to her patients as well as to the residents and students are a continuous inspiration to me.  She is originally from Wilmington, NC, and has been on several other mission trips to the Dominican Republic and Thailand but never to Guatemala.  We have been trying to get her down here with me for a good two years now, so this is a little bit of a dream come true for us and will be a huge help to me on the trip.

Kelley Haven is a fourth year medical student whose father is a practicing OB/GYN in Greenville, NC—We met her last year when she did her required rotation with us in OB, back before she thought she wanted to go in to OB/GYN as a specialty!  It was such fun to watch her fall in love with the field, and I was thrilled when she was able to work this trip/rotation in to her fourth year schedule.  She is the mother of a beautiful three-year old, Minerva or “Minnie”, so please pray for her especially this week as I am sure she will miss her dearly.

Sandy and Jared Williams are friends from our church, Integrity Church in Greenville, NC, whom we have known for just over a year or so now.  Sandy has trained as a Certified Nurse Midwife but has been at home with her kids full-time since Jared was born 17 years ago so she thinks her skills might be a “bit rusty”.  We are totally praying for a nice delivery or two while we are down there, though, to confirm that delivery skills really are “like riding a bike” and not soon forgotten.  It’s actually rare that we get to do deliveries, though, so it’s kind of a special request ;-)  She became interested in the trip when Jared (the oldest of their four children) began to express interest in a possible career in medicine, so we are praying for positive exposure for him during this trip also.  (A little bit selfishly, we are also praying that God sends us plenty of patients that need abdominal surgeries as opposed to all vaginal surgeries which might be a little much for a 17 year old guy… even a very bright and mature one like Jared!)

I am so excited that both Tom AND JANA Hoak will be in Chichicastenango this week with us—Jana has lived in Guatemala City with their girls up until July when they sent the youngest one off to college, with Tom only seeing his family on the weekends.  I haven’t seen dear Jana in over a year, I don’t think, so I’m very excited to reconnect and celebrate her recent good health news!  (Long story short, we really thought she had cancer for a couple of weeks but are very relieved to find that everything is benign…)  For those of you new to our adventures, Tom Hoak is a very talented general surgeon originally from Minnesota who has served the people of Guatemala full-time for about seven years now.

I will try to get some pictures up as soon as we take any—Sandy brought her good camera and is very excited to try to get some good shots as photography is a favorite hobby.  I’m really excited about her getting those, too!  I tend to otherwise be lazy about getting pictures, so you will have her to thank for those when they do come…

Again, please just pray for God to send the patients that need our help, and to give us the strength, patience, and love to minister to each and every one of them in a way that allows them to see a tiny little spark of a reflection of the amazing love that our Lord Jesus Christ has for them!  To Him be the glory.

Last Days...

Well, yesterday's plans changed when the Fickers called and let us know that a cargo plane had crashed on the runway here in Guatemala City and had the airport closed up for an unknown amount of time.  (I did just now find an internet story that confirmed everyone was OK...)  We had planned to fly out to Canilla to see them and help with clinic this morning.  When we weren't sure when the airport would open back up, we went ahead and hired a car down here to The City and got a hotel room for the night.  Thanks to knowing a LOT of great people here in Guatemala, we are in a really, really nice room for the night that we probably couldn't afford if not for knowing people in the hospitality business here (Thanks, Matt Capehart!)

Before leaving out of Chichi we said goodbye to all of our patients for the week-- Thanks to great anesthesia, Sarah being a great surgeon, and lots of prayers going up, they all looked fantastic and were ready to go home.  Here are a few pictures Sarah shot of us saying goodbye...

And a nice shot of Angelica (the circulating nurse), Don, Marianne, and Alma (the scrub nurse for 27 years at the hospital!)

Today will be another loooooooooonnnng travel day, but it will end in the best part of the trip-- quick kisses to our sleeping babies and husbands!  Then waking up tomorrow morning to the best Mother's Day present ever-- being together with family again.

We will continue to pray for Elias, Juana, Perla, Maria, Oralia, Mikaela, Candelaria, the other Juana, and Marta in their recoveries from surgeries-- many of them had to travel over two hours to their homes, much of it on foot, after discharge yesterday.  This is something I can't imagine doing two days after an abdominal surgery-- You can ask Matt about what a wimp I was just climbing in and out of the minivan on post-op day two!  The difference in "first world problems" and reality for most of the world is astounding... 

Thank you all for your love and support this week.  We will be back on August 11th of this year, and I'm super excited that my friend and colleague Tana Hall will be joining me along with Sandy Williams and her son Jared from Church (Sandy is trained as a midwife but hasn't practiced in a while so we'll be helping her brush up her skills again)  Stay tuned then for more follow-up!  I will try to also keep y'all in the loop as I get pathology reports back-- we are worried about a possible endometrial cancer with Marta and possible cervical cancer with Juana so we are really praying that is not the case. 

When you guys see Sarah Gore, please thank her for her HARD WORK this week and talk to her about her experience-- Can't wait to see some of YOU down here in the future!