Triage Day

Hola, folks! I'm here in my living room...

I wanted to update you guys on what has been going on lately.

Yesterday was absolutely exhausting. 

I was up before the sun rose and didn't get home until long after it set.

I arrived at the clinic and met the new surgery team for the first time. For the most part, these folks are from Canada.

I was asked by the team to work in patient pre-surgery consultations/triaging. I recorded the vital signs of the patients and took a medical history and current complaints report. To say that my language skills were tested is an understatement. 

I had to take everything the patients were saying into my brain in Spanish and record their medical history and explain their need for surgery in English for the doctors. Yikes. For some of you bilinguals out there, that may sound easy. For me, it was a challenge. 

I haven't gotten to use my medical Spanish much in the past (other than what I've studied in books) so as people were telling me all about their hernias, tumors, masses, cysts, and other abnormalities, I was really having the concentrate on exactly what it was that they were saying.

I am so thankful that I had a helper throughout all of this. His story is pretty cool, actually. Fransisco (seen in the picture below) is a 17 year old studying to be a nurse here in Guatemala. He received a scholarship from the organization that is visiting us and doing the surgeries this week.

I taught him how to help me fill out the evaluation form (the stuff that didn't require English) and let him help in me with vitals. It was wonderful. After my brain started getting tired, he started telling me of things I was missing on the form. To say that I was appreciative is an understatement.

After literally an entire day of talking and discussing and asking and translating and organizing almost non-stop, Fransisco and I saw almost 70 patients in total for surgery. That means that those 70 patients will get surgeries this week that will literally change their entire lives. 

Children will have tumors removed that hinder the from doing daily tasks, women will have cancerous lesions cut out, sparing their lives, people of all ages will have hernias repaired that cause ostracization and much pain. It was beautiful. 

I was able to sit down and listen to dozens and dozens of stories of people with fixable infirmities that are being given a new start this week.

I cannot be more proud to be a part of this work.

Some fotos:

This is a little boy who has a tumor growing on the inside of his nose. He was very shy at first when he saw me in my scrubs and stethoscope. I imagine he thought that I might have a needle of some sort. After receiving a blown up glove balloon, assuring him that my blood pressure cuff would only "hug" his arm,  and me finding his ticklish spot, we became pretty good friends.

This is Fransisco, the nursing student I mentioned earlier (Left) and one of our hernia patients (Right).

The rest of the week we'll be in surgery. That means a lot of work and organization on the visiting team's part. Please pray these surgeries go well, and that we will all come through this a whole lot better than when we started.

Thanks for the support, you guys.

Love,

Cody