Day 1:
Early breakfast , getting to know everyone because yesterday when we arrived we all were so exhausted but excited to make it to antigua and we all split up to do different activities. My group went on a little hike to a beautiful cross overlooking the city for example.
After breakfast we had our morning devotional with Rob and Mellisa and prayed about our clinic day.
After the beautiful walk down the OLD cobblestone roads to the hospital, we split into probably 10 different rooms for clinics. The patients were all in this open area waiting to be seen. I couldn’t tell if all of them could fit into our schedules! Come to find out a lot travels for over 6 hours and weren’t even able to be seen but are on a waitlist and multiple of them were called as we found spots for them after they were already on their ways home. The tears and joy and gratefulness of these humans was incredible to witness.
I spent a lot of my morning listening to patient story after story. Childhood burns that they’ve lived with for years needing to be fixed, moto accident after moto accident (as that’s the easy way of transportation here) with broken femurs, old hardware needing to be removed causing infection or stillness after bones have been healed… the sweetest 6 year old girl with two thumbs that we get to help today and the teenage boy, henry who burned his foot with boiling water when he was 3 and it has healed tight and toes right on top of one another, who needs muscles released and scar tissue resected and will most likely loose his two baby toes that now sit on the top of his foot, but will feel brand new and had a huge smile on his face to hear about this upcoming procedure that will help him walk more normally.
Our nurses , doctors , translators etc. worked as a beautiful team even with a language barrier in communicating needs back and forth for these humans in need and we were successful in almost 90% of the cases I saw in being able to help them this week.
Leaving the clinic with excitement for the week to come we all went on a very rainy walk through the city of Antigua , hearing the church bells and avoiding the fast paced motos with every corner. We met at a little outdoor patio happy hour as a team and discussed all we saw. The feeling between us all was amazing to witness, even without words you could feel it in the air.
Getting back for our late night dinner we all continued to discuss what we saw and feel all the feelings of excitement and gratefulness.
Going into the first day of surgery we were all remembering these cases and excited for these patients, excited to follow their stories today and through the week.
Being somebody new, it was really cool to see how the hospital and volunteers worked together. It seemed pretty seamless that all the patients were so prepared and made our job easy to come in and be able to fit into our goals. That was really cool to see.
I was also so impressed with all the patients and the kindness that the people showed. Some had to be turned away for surgery, which has got to be really disappointing, but they still were so kind and gracious.
It’s always nice to meet them at the beginning, seeing their surgery, and then seeing them in rehab. It’s amazing what they accomplish. I know they’re going to be smiling the day after. It’s a good opportunity to meet them and hear their story, meet their family.
One of our neatest experiences was a guy here who had been here before (local guy) who had a hip that was gone. Terribly hip. I think he had been here before and it had gotten bump. He was born here and lives here now, but he lived in Chicago so he spoke perfect english. Because he wasn’t the most acute patient, we had to say that he couldn’t, but he was gracious and offered to help translate. One of the surgeries wasn’t cleared however, and so they had an open spot and called him to let him know they could do it.
He came in with tears streaming down his face, so grateful.
