Team Johnson 843 – Day 5: Scrambling into Action
Our team’s third clinic day in Totonicapán began with a high-priority patient already inside our triage center in the school gymnasium, laid out on a table with apparently no mobility. Faith in Practice personnel immediately swung into group action.
Mobility clinic physician Dr. Bernie Gallacher was first on the case, but he quickly called upon trip leader Dr. Phil Johnson and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Mark Woolf, who usually joins surgical teams but has been a part of the Johnson team twice to assess patients in villages.
They concluded that the patient, Byron, had an undiagnosed neurological issue that sapped his mobility, causing a fall that led to what turned out to be a fractured right femur, leaving him bedridden for weeks. Dr. Robert Wright and RN Pam Gallacher attempted ultrasound but soon decided x-rays were needed.
FIP village coordinator Julia Seida darted across the street to a fire station where emergency personnel whisked Byron to an x-ray location and brought him back, confirming the break that would need surgery. He was scheduled with an FIP surgical team arriving in three weeks.
Julia found a wood plank that the team fashioned into a splint to allow him to sit in a wheelchair with his leg immobilized with a temporary leg brace that Pam, Mark and wheelchair assembler David Sibley made. David and fellow wheelchair crewman Ivan Gomez helped move Byron to the chair, where he expressed relief he was upright.
Byron has a long road and many more FIP helping hands will be needed in surgery and recovery, and he will need a neurological consult to diagnose the underlying condition. Please keep Byron in your thoughts!
Prior to that, the day began on a jolly note back at the hotel as Hokey Pokey returned before Wednesday devotional. Chaplain Azariah Terrell’s message focused on seeing the presence of God in our patients and sharing our own spirit with them.
On the misty mountain hop from Quetzaltenango to Totonicapán, team co-leader and lifelong veteran of Guatemalan service Phil Johnson talked to the group about the role of women in Mayan society, particularly their “traje” traditional dress that has evolved over centuries through early migration, Spanish conquest, civil war and, now, modern sewing technology.
Once again, we arrived at the sun-dappled yellow-and-white schoolhouse ready to serve patients who already were queued up. The building, built in 1948 by Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, Juan Jose Arevalo, has proven to be one of the best bases of operations many longtime Faith in Practice volunteers have worked in.
Robert Wright, who saw scores of patients after Byron, said reaching out to people who cannot access basic medical care gets him “out of my comfort zone” and his 12 total trips have energized him in his “day job” in College Station. But there’s more to it than medicine.
“I was able to lead a young woman to Christ at the end of a busy and exhausting day,” Robert said. “It impacts my daily practice by bringing the same attitude of service and kindness, even when it is really hard.”
Check back in with us tomorrow for our last clinic day!
Josie + Mark
