All in all we would not say it was a great experience, nor a terrible experience, but we have learned much more about the healthcare system in Guatemala and Lisa has learned new skills that she did not have as a US physician. She can now start any IV line, set arterial lines, perform respiratory therapy and her skills as a phlebotomist, transport aide and many other ancillary type functions have improved tremendously. Oh, and she can do a lumbar puncture with the best of them. One thing we can say about the physician education here is that they get a very good education on clinical diagnosis without the availability of high tech diagnosing procedures.
Here is another picture of some of the buildings at the Hospital. The large groups of people you see in the background are at the hospital for a consult for their children - could be a surgical or medical consult for patients with long term illness to surgical candidates such as spina bifida, hernias, hydrocephalus, etc. 2 weeks ago I went along with a family from Chichicastenango to help them through the maze to get a consult for their newborn baby who was born with probable spina bifida. It is a very confusing process, but in the end we received what we needed and they come back next week for another consult. We will be praying that all goes well. This helps us understand why families are very reserved about wanting to go through the process. It is not that people treat them bad, but the process is complicated and you must just keep trying until you are in the correct location for your consult. On any given day there are hundreds of people in lines going through the same process. This would not be the poster-board for an efficient government healthcare system, but it is the best they have and if you persevere you will probably eventually get the care you need.
For all of you transcriptionists out there my hat is off to you. I have spent the day translating letters from the ABC children to their sponsors and have learned that I would not be very good at this full-time. I am way to easily distracted and as you can tell, I am posting a blog instead of translating the letters right now. I am not even close to my goal of completing a good number of them. I started with 75 letters and still have a pretty good stack left! I would not be making very good productivity standards and these are the type standards which I helped develop in the past! I am glad there are people in this world that have this wonderful, God given skill as are many physicians and other professionals are as well! At one point in Lisa's practice she tried the voice recognition thing to quickly decide no thank you. So kudos to you!
Lisa and I want to thank each and every one of you for your prayer support and financial support during this year and of course for all of our time while in Guatemala. This by far has been the hardest year in a long time for us and probably much more for Lisa. We entered the year with a not so great attitude and much fear about what would happen and along the way doubted many times, but through your prayer support and the grace of God we have been able to finish the year and we look back at it with a much more humble attitude. We pray that God will continue to guide us and mold us as we attempt to serve Him - In our weakness, He has made us strong!
Tomorrow we are free of this responsibility and we can begin to look forward to many more opportunities. Next week we join a surgical team at Clinica Ezell in Montellano and the following week we are going to take a few days to go to the beach in Honduras (one of the benefits of living somewhat close to Roatan). Then we head back to Chichicastenango to meet up with our fellow team members for the rest of August. We will probably have some trips to the city to finish up paperwork provided the university is able to have what we need ready. If not we will finish that up in October. In September we head to the US to spend some time with family and get a little rest before starting with clinics in October. For me, I have probably had enough rest these last months, but Lisa is well deserving.
God bless and please continue to check in!
3 comments:
Great news!! Congratulations to you both. I'm confident God's plan is coming together to continue to use you in His work. Excited that you can now turn back to where your passion lies.
By the way, why is the hospital named, "Roosevelt"? That struck me as odd.
The hospital is named after FDR who granted funds for the building of the original builiding during his presidency.
congrats! we are soooo glad to hear that you are done!
hopefully we'll see you in chichi in a few more months. heidi starts her job at ECU in about three more weeks...
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