Today I had the pleasure of meeting Edgar who is at Hospital Hilario Galindo awaiting his hernia surgery. Edgar was patiently sitting along the wall outside the dorms along with the other patients who will also have surgery through this week. What I hadn’t known was what the process the patients went through before getting their surgery. Hector was kind enough to share his story with me.
Edgar has spent time in the U.S. and has been a patient at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after a major car accident. Edgar spoke beautiful about his time in Tennessee and all of the work he did on several jobs. He was happy to be a patient of our Team Hartz.
It is not an easy process, the patients sometimes wait years for the FIP surgeons to come to Retalhuleu, and they wait out these years in pain but continue to work through the pain so they can keep feeding their families!
Our patients this week are “locals” but local means patients sometimes travel up to 3 hours to get here. After our patients arrive the testing, bloodwork and x-rays are processed a week prior to surgery. When our team arrives the patient’s vitals are documented and they discuss their health and surgery with the Anesthetists and Surgeons and are assigned a day for surgery. The best part of waiting for the upcoming surgery is the amazing meals they get prepared by Nineth & Romeo!
Tomorrow I will see Edgar again when he enters holding to prepare for surgery.
