Todos jugamos nuestro papel – We all play our part.
This morning I gathered my photography gear and the 42 items that go along with it. Before walking out the door I repeat each item out loud in fear of forgetting something crucial. I believe this pales in comparison to the items each person on this journey brings to the mission. I’m not performing surgery or providing anesthesia or interpreting, etc. I don’t mean to downplay my importance but watching these people, each one in their specialty, tend to the patients in their care, is beyond everything. Every single person has a role and every role is important. The respect and camaraderie among the Faith In Practice team makes me feel honored to be a part of it.
Yet another victim of Covid, the Hospital Hilario Galindo hasn’t seen a surgical team in two years. Imagine the first surgery. Everyone here is professional but as with any situation like this, you’re not in your own space, using your own equipment, where you know the location of that equipment, where you can grab it in a second…and it works perfectly. Now throw in a surgical procedure involving 80 tools and patients who are sensitive to anesthesia. So what if you can’t find sutures for a Septoplasty (found some). So what if you have to try and figure out how to get irrigation saline. Maybe you just use a pair of scissors to stab a hole in the container because you don’t have a large enough syringe with a sharp end. (I’m talking to you, Susan Cataia and Kimberly Skinner, the Hero of the Day Scrub Nurses who did the heavy lifting this morning prepping the operating rooms and helping the surgeons make everything run seamlessly.)
Thank you, God, for reigning in the chaos. Seriously.
Our Pastor, Kristin Huffman reminded us that in God’s eyes we are all important and unique. She spoke of a patient, Nancy, a 45-yr-old woman who arrived from Guatemala City last night. (Remember the 6.5 hour bus ride?) She hadn’t eaten in almost 18 hours as she waited for surgery to remove a mass in her uterus the size of a cantaloupe. Nancy told Kristin she had gathered the other patients waiting for surgery and prayed with them. She did what God called her to do and had the heart to serve others. Every day we are seeing examples of this love.
Hasta mañana
P.S. We saw a volcano erupting on the way to the hospital.
