Team Johnson 843 – Day 6: Goodbye for now, Totonicapán
Hello again from Josie and Mark!
The final clinic day in Totonicapán began with disturbingly convincing Buddy the Elf cosplay by David Sibley, Robert Wright and Joe Wiseman, followed by a meditation inspired by Scripture from Romans about rejoicing and mourning with one another, living in harmony. Chaplain Azariah Terrell spoke of showing empathy without necessarily fixing, which is not always possible nor requested.
Team leader Phil Johnson’s bus narration this morning focused on the food, demographics and political history of Guatemala, particularly the Mayan region. A large queue of morning patients cheered and greeted the team upon arrival, and we quickly got moving on another sunny, brisk mountain morning.
On this final day of clinic work, the team was well prepared to make adjustments as needed to maintain efficiency without compromising patient care. When wheelchair orders slowed, assembler Tom O’Brien went over to the Pediatrics clinic to help scribe for his wife, Dr. Mary O’Brien, as she tended to our youngest patients. Another assembler, Dave Sibley, helped out in the pharmacy. When mobility patients ran out, Dr. Bernie Gallacher switched from that clinic to General to help with its long line.
The mobility team completed the task of building 113 wheelchairs, effectively exhausting the supply. More than a dozen of them went to patients from a mountain village, returning with them tied to the roofs of the vans and trucks in which they arrived.
Later, as the clinics wound down and the packing ramped up, Azariah reflected on his first Faith in Practice trip, which for him only came together a couple of months ago after his boss at the Memorial Hermann system in Houston suggested he look into it.
“There’s a saying, ‘Don’t just talk about it, be about it,’” said Azariah, who manages the hospital system’s Code Lilac peer-to-peer support program. He added that he’s learned the “Faith” in Faith in Practice cuts both ways.
“I’ve heard some of these folks are making eight-hour trips in the mountains. That is faith. That’s what I see when I hear their stories,” he said.
After packing up for the week, our excellent and hard-working local volunteers, along with the pastor of the church from which many of them came and the principal of the school that was our home for four days, said their goodbyes and honored us with woven “recuerdos”, or remembrances of our time together.
Back at the hotel in the evening, our local FIP staff shared the patient totals with us for the week. The Johnson team served 1,074 individual patients who attended a combined 2,592 clinics and took home 107 of the wheelchairs, along with other mobility aids like crutches and walkers. The IVAA clinic saw 118 patients and discovered and treated nine positive cases, preventing those nine women from developing cervical cancer. As Dr. Phil Johnson reminded us, these represent nine families who could have lost a daughter, sister, wife, or mother.
We ran 280 labs, primarily urine and glucose tests, through RN Char Schuman’s one-woman lab machine. Various doctors performed 55 ultrasounds to examine potential internal issues as well as the happier cases of pregnancies. The general medicine clinic saw a whopping 603 patients, gynecology had 171, mobility 150, orthopedics 141, ENT 135 and pediatrics 114. Those clinics sent 901 patients to the beehive of activity that was the pharmacy, while 113 were referred for further evaluation or treatment and 185 were set for surgery.
One patient not included in any of those totals was a local boy who came in with a gashed left arm, which nurse practitioner Robin Beach stitched up quickly.
“He said he climbed a tree to get a better view of the school and fell,” Robin said.
We all gathered for a celebration dinner back in Quetzaltenango, honoring our leaders and each other who were part of the family that is the Johnson team. There was lots of hugging and sharing of stories of the week that was, then it was off to prepare for the long bus ride down to Antigua.
Goodbye, Totonicapán. For now!
Thank you so much for following along with our journey this week, and please consider supporting this wonderful organization if you haven’t already—any extra funds beyond those required for our team will go toward future teams visiting more villages across Guatemala and performing surgeries or other follow up care for patients like those we met this week.
¡Adios y gracias a todos!
Josie + Mark
