Thoughts on my trip (in list form)

1.  I struggled a bit at first with what we were actually accomplishing in providing such stop gap medical care to these people.  We couldn't do anything that would realy fix any of the their problems.  We could just but very insufficient band aids on.  But after a lot of prayer and journaling, by the middle of the week, I realized that even if our efforts only provide momentary relief, these people still deserve that.  So the little girl with lice deserves a week without an itchy head even though her environment means she's probably start reinfesting within moments of finishing her shampoo.  Everyone deserves to have a month without a stomach ache even if the water supply is so contaminated that they will get parasite all over again.  Everyone deserves to have their headache  treated even if it is caused by chronic dehydration from working in the dump.  

2.  I was never scared where we were working even though I had a sense that while things were o-kay in the moment it wouldn't only take a little provocation for things to get out of control fast.  Men high on glue are unpredictable to say the least.  Does not being scared mean I'm stupid or brave????

3.  To take the parasite meds or not, that is the question....  I have a three day course of meds that will kill most of the things that are living in my intestines just in case.  Everyone says it won't hurt anything but I haven't taken it yet.  I'd really like to know I have something before I take it not because I am scared of the meds but so I can claim a really good war wound.  If only proof of a parasite didn't involve a stool sample. (GROSS!!!!)

4.  Despite feeling like I ate my way through Honduras (The food was delicious!) I didn't gain any weight.  I was seriously worried there for a while!!!!

5.  One of the people on the trip warned me that when I got back people wouldn't ask for details of what we did and what we saw because they instinctively know that the details will be overwhelming.  I didn't believe him!  But I've been with Hubby's family twice since I've been back and no one has gone beyond "Did you have a good trip?" and "Are you glad to be back?"

6.  Other folks from church have taken their kids on this trip ( preteens and teens). I would take my oldest (almost 12) but my little ones, not yet. I don't think they have the perspective to be able to process what they'd see.  

7.  I LOVED the medical stuff!!!!!  Loved it.  This is my calling.

8.  My Spanish is pretty abyssmal.  I had a very hard time understanding other people and don't think well on my feet to make myself understood.  Practice practice practice.

Pictures pictures pictures

An excellent processing/ debriefing method is to use your mac to make a slide show of you mission trip on iphoto.  Not only do you lean some new software shills but you get to see your photos in 17 inches of glorious LCD glossy loveliness.  (I expect Time magazine to call and ask to run some of my photos any minute).  I can't upload the whole things to my blog (I don't think) but imagine Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" playing in the background.

This first on is from the neighborhood where we did home medical  visits for the Micah Boys families after church on Sunday.  The conditions ranged from horrendous to clean and tidy but still deep poverty.  Most of the boys aren't orphans, they were just absorbed on to the streets when their parents own poverty or addictions made parenting impossible.  I think this woman looks like she is in jail thanks to her poverty.



This is our church staff person for missions (Mary) giving a good bye hug to Wilmer one of the boys.  Wilmer is 14 and has been using drugs and living on the street for a long time.  He came to the Micah Project a year ago and has been in and out since.  He just disappears for weeks at a time.  The last time he ran away a decision was made not to go get him but to let him decide whether he wants to come back.  He came back the day our team arrived.  Mary is telling him to please stay at he house and don't leave any more.
These are the Micah Boys!  We brought them all soccer jerseys with nicknames for each guy on the back.  They are all so darn cute!
This is the dump where we did an afternoon of medical clinic and VBS type activities.  The trucks come in and dump their loads and people run over to pick through the trash to find anything that might be usable or recyclable.  Joining the people are the flies (it was thick), stray dogs, vultures and later in the day, cattle.  I had a woman come an ask me for something for her nervousness.  It was quite a contrast to the kind of people who are on meds for general anxiety here.  A woman with three kids who eeks out a living picking through garbage vs a woman with three kids who finds traffic annoying.  We had nothing to offer her.
Below is our surgeon with a man who showed us a huge ulcerated skin cancer on his chest.  This is the kind of skin cancer your and I would go to the dermatologist and have taken off when it was the size of a mole.  His was so big it was unremoveable (certainly in the field but I'm not sure anyone could have removed it.)  The face on picture grosses my kids out so I didn't post that one.  


Yours truly with a couple Micah guys after our good-bye dinner.  

258

258 is the number of patients that we saw in our two days at the more formal clinic in Villa Linda Miller. We actually saw more patients than that because people would comein for their kids to be seen by the pediatrician and we would end up seeing the parents as well without any paperwork. The families that actually live in Villa Linda Miller are poor but because of the consistent work of the medical mission teams they are relatively healthy. We still passed out a lot of vitamins and parasite medicine. Actually anyone that came in got parasite meds and vitamins. We also saw some very desparate people from the surrounding area that came in including one little boy who was pretty malnurished, not walking at age 3 with spindly legs and a head that appeared too big for ihis body. The story was hard to decipher but it sounded like the woman who had brought him in wasn{t his mother but had taken him in when his mother abandoned him at her house. It was very vyer sad. We were able to hook tham up with another ministry in the area to get them some extra food to try and catch this little guy up. Hopefully that all works out. We also saw a young woman about 13 who said she had a sore throat and body aches. Almost everyone who comes into the clinic says that but tuned out she had tonsillitis and probably felt pretty cruddy. After she trusted us a bit she shyly asked if we had anothing that could help her face as she had pretty severe acne. As a matter of fact by choosing one antibiotic over another we were able to give her one drug that would help her throat and clear her face up. It might not keep her face clear but it felt good to be able to even help with a vanity issue!
Our hardest day so far was the afternoon we spent in the dump. Yes, that kind of dump. the poorest of the poor live in the dump and pick through the trash looking for something to recycle or sell. It is horrendous. Truly hell on earth. There are children that work the dump as well. A couple years ago a man from Villa Linda Miller started a school for the children of the dump and it has been tremendously successful. He{s gotten 150 kids out of the dump until noon everyday and in school. Despite that the dump is a desparate place. We passed out parasite meds like candy, cleaned out incredible dirty wounds, I listened to lots of hearts and lungs and gave out lots of tylenol and advil. We treated as much as we could but the conditions are just so awful. It was heartbreaking.
One more story and then I gotta run. the first night we were here a woman showed up at the Micah project house with her 10 year old son. He{d been running fever and was lethargic and refusing to walk because his joiints hurt so bad. Our team of doctors (which includes a neurologist and a pedi ER doc) checked him over and even called collegues back in the states for ideas of what to do. Our ER doc discovered during the exam that his hip was where most of the pain was. They decided that there were way too many things it could be and without x-rays it was impossible to say but agreed with the mother that she could go home that night and they would call her the next day. The next day he was worse, higher fever, worse pain, etc. So our team insisted that the mother needed to take him to the hospital. Sure enough he had an infection inhis hip joint that required surgery. Had he not gone to the hospital the infection could have spread to the bone and that is very vyer serious.
Oh, I lied, one more story, yesterday at the clinic we had a mom of a 15 day old baby come in with.......yes, a breastfeeding problem!!!! Fixed her right up! She had a pretty severe plugged duct so I gave her all the home care advice and some antibiotics to take if it turned into mastitis.

We leave Tegucigalpa tomorrow and will be home Satruday. Great trip, would definitely come again but Im ready for my own bed, hot showers and hugs from my girls!

Hola from Honduras

Hi blog readers! I{m in Honduras on a medical mission trip. Been here for two days now. Seen quite a bit. I{m working with a ministry here in hondras that reaches out to street kids particularly boys. They have a residential facility for about 12 boys that works toward getting them off of yellow shoe glue (the highly addictive very cheap drug of choice for street kids) and getting them an education. Several of their boys have graduated from the homeschool they provide and are in college in central america and in the states. Some of their boys have gone back to the streets. But being with the boys has been a real highlight so far. They are extrodinary young men ywho have been through more suffering in their short lives than I can imagine. Yesterday we went to the bridge where lot os the street kids hang out and did a very rudimentary clinic. We saw lots of rotten teeth and untreated wounds. One guy came up having just been in a knife fight with a pretty good laceration on his hand. Unfortunately we had a surgeon but no sutures so we cleaned it out (cleaned by your favorite nursing student!!!) and literally put a bandaid on it. Most of the kids were sniffing yellow glue and were very very strung out. Unreal! Tomorrow we are doing a more formal clinic in a planned community for folks who were displaced after hurricane Mitch. Folks from outlying areas come in whne the clinic is open so we{ll probably see lots of people. Overall, the trip is going really well. I{m enjoying the medical aspects. I{m speaking more Spanish than I thought I could. Understanding very little that is said to me but a smile and a hug seems to go a long way here. It is hard to see such massiv eneeds and know the only thing we have is a pack of vitamins and some anti parasite medicine. When I get back I{ll ppost some pictures....

Adios.