Things to be grateful for....

Now that we are home we can reflect back on our experience and realize all the things in life that we are grateful for. First and foremost, I am grateful for the wonderful family I have. My kids are happy and healthy and bring me the most joy out of life. I am grateful that I am employed and can afford healthcare. I have many amenities that people in other countries don't have access to. I can feel safe going to the grocery store after dark. I am grateful for a public school system. I don't have to see armed guards at the corner of every street.

On a lighter note.....I am grateful that I can flush toilet paper. I am grateful for no longer needing pre-emptive Imodium each morning. I am happy to have access to a refrigerator and my own comfy bed. As much as I enjoy rice and beans, I am grateful for a variety of my familiar foods. I am grateful for a reliable hot water heater.

Things I'll miss...The wonderful people I met along my travels. Fresh banana daiquiri's. Learning new Spanish words from the Honduran children at the Red Cross. Sipping a Port Royal with my friends.

I'm sure I've missed a few things but will always look back on this experience and realize all the things life has to offer me.

Cris

Thanks to TACA airlines (take a chance airlines) we were 2 hours late and missed our connection to Houston. We're still in Honduras for another day. We're all ready to get back home!

We were a little worried about the ferry ride from La Ceiba to Roatan when they passed out the sick bags to everyone

Relaxation time

Pics of the Red Cross Medical Clinic

Banana delivery cart

Radiology

Sterile processing dept and our new friends at Atlantida Hospital

Hi from Roatan!

Hi everyone...we do have internet access at our resort on the island.

The day before we headed out here, we went zip lining...they had 18 lines, and one was a kilometer long...our guides were great and it was a lot of fun. Once that was over, they took us to some natural hot spring and we all soaked in the water and smeared ourselves with the mud...even boyscout snoopy got a mud bath! Our skin felt so soft afterwards. After we all rinsed off and changed into dry clothes, the driver took us into town for lunch at an open air restaurant that overlooked the ocean. We had an incredible lunch with an amazing view. I know you are all thinking of some fancy place from the description, but it was literally a large thatch roof hut as are most of the places here. When we were walking out, a girl came up and was selling homemade doughnuts...they beat Krispy Kreams anyday! The weather was just beautiful, and the entire day was so much fun!

Getting here to the island the next morning was an adventure....you know when they come around and pass out barf bags to everyone on the ferry, that the ride will be ROUGH! Fortunately none of us got sick, but I am sure more than a few did. We had to take a taxi from one end of the island to the other to get to our resort, so we got a nice little island tour. Once we got to the resort, it started pouring rain...and our room wasn't ready yet, so we were FORCED to sit at the bar and have the worlds best banana daiquiris! :) Around noon it cleared up so we layed in the sun for a bit and then ventured down the beach to the more commercial area. We did some shopping and then had some dinner and drinks on a rooftop bar while watching the sun go down...it was great! We came back and relaxed on our porch and listened to the waves since they are only a few steps away from our "beach house". This morning it is cloudy again, but is supposed to clear up soon, and then tomorrow is supposed to be sunny. Cris and I are either going to go snorkeling or swimming with the dolphins...not sure which yet!

Jodi

This window is where patients are passed through to be discharged from the recovery room to the ward

Pictures!

Pre-op holding; x-ray view boxes and our surgical suite:

Work is over!

Our work here is done! We haven't been able to post much in the last few days due to monsoon-like rains that took our internet connection down and also left us with large puddles in our room.

Our week was spent at the red cross running a clinic, and over the course of 4 days we saw about 450 patients with various aliments. We had a lot of fun playing with all the kids that came through there, but it was a lot of hard work. The kids are just beautiful here, so we took lots of pictures of them. We were supposed to spend tomorrow cleaning and packing up our stuff at the clinic, but we stayed late tonight to clean up in order to have tomorrow totally off.

Tomorrow Cris, Judy, and I are going zip-lining and then swimming in some hot springs. In the evening we have our "farewell dinner", and then Saturday we leave for Roatan for 4 days of relaxation!

Is it Tuesday??

Hi everyone...the days have just blended into each other so it is hard to keep track of which day it really is. Today we had a lot more people show up at the clinic so we kept busy the entire day. We also had two tv crews in there today doing clips on the clinic, so we know we will be REALLY busy the next few days now that the word is out. We have seen a lot of moms with lots of kids come through, and the kids are sooooo cute! The weather has been really hot and humid, but during the day the red cross rooms we are in are air conditioned, so that is great, but once we walk out it is like walking into a blast furnace. I am attaching some pictures that Judy took of some of the kids at the clinic.

Hola from Honduras

The La Ceiba Cruz Roja (Red Cross) Clinic is now open. We saw about 60 patients today. Many moms with two or three sick children; adults with migraines and various pains; old people with hypertension and diabetes. Everybody wants pain medicines (Ibuprofen, Aspirin or Tylenol are all we have) and vitamins. We don´t have the equipment, supplies or medications to actually diagnose and treat people. It´s just doing the best we can with what we´ve got (which is more that they would have otherwise). Our motto for the week, which I have borrowed from "The Alchemist" is "Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight." Tomorrow the sun will come up, we will climb into the back of our truck "Honduran style," and head for the Cruz Roja once again. Buenas noches.

Judy

Our day off

Hi Everyone--today was our only full day off. One of the surgeons we worked with at the local hospital volunteered to let us use his beach house for the day, so we couldn´t turn that down! :) He sent a driver for us in the morning, and we traveled up the coast for about 30 minutes. His house is located in a secure community and they have three beautiful swimming pools, bars and restaurants, and a beautiful beach area. We spent the entire day hanging out at the beach and laying in the sun. The water wasn´t freezing and the ocean bottom was nice and sandy, so it was great for swimming too. We are all kinda crispy now, and Cris has some interesting sunburn patterns where she missed applying sunscreen. It was a great day of sun and relaxation for us. Tomorrow morning we start running a clinic at the red cross at 7 am and they expect there will be close to 100 people waiting when we show up in the morning.

Sat. Night

Hola,

Looks like I´m posting again, we are all so tired by the end of the day. This morning we got to sleep an extra hour and went to the hospital to empty our storage area and clean up after ourselves. We then moved our supplies to the Red Cross for next weeks clinic.

This afternoon we relaxed by the pool and did a little shopping before dinner. One thing I can say for sure is that next year I´ll have to be a little more fluent in Spanish. Our taxi driver from dinner asked us if we had a happy day and we all agreed. Two minutes later he was in front of the Happy Day bar. All confusion was soon settled and we made it back to the hotel. We all got a chuckle out of it, including our driver.

Hope all is well back home!
Cris

Our last day of surgeries.

Happy friday!

Today was our last day working in surgery. Our team surgeon has to fly home very early tomorrow morning. So tomorrow we head back to the hospital to pack up and move our supplies back into storage at the Red Cross. We have Sat afternoon through Monday morning to ourselves. Monday we start a week of seeing patients at the Red Cross. We were told that our medical clinic is being advertised throughout town.

Today we planned on getting out of the hospital by 6 to have a group dinner with some of our new Honduran friends that worked with us this past week. But as most of my work friends know, sometimes the best made plans sometimes get delayed. I was so tired that I´m not even sure what time we left. But we did make it to the restaraunt just before their 10pm closing. 9 of us road to the restauraunt in a pick-up. Try to visualize us riding through La Ceiba, Honduras in the back of a pick-up!

I anticipate that we will have more time to write tomorrow.

Good night!

Cris

Thursday´s news

Wow--can´t believe it is thursday already...I think today we did six suregeries, including the poor man who sat there for the entire day yesterday that we were not able to get to. This morning the doctor let all of us do rounds with him...I thought the surgery ward was very primitive...it is the RITZ compared to the rest of the hospital....people are just laying in the hallways....there are no real ¨waiting area¨ so people are just sitting everywhere....the smell of urine is overpowering. When you go into the wards (they have mens, womens, and childrens)they are just laying on the bare bed...some have sheets but no one has any pillows or anything unless your family brings you some. The patients we visited for post op were all doing fine and very happy to see us and they let us take pictures with them. They were serving breakfast when we were doing rounds....it consists of two pieces of bread and refriend beans and something that looks like coffee...and that is it. One thing I also wanted to mention was that in the surgery ward we only have one bathroom...and I don´t mean one set of mens and women´s bathrooms...I mean ONE toilet. The team that was here last year said we have it easy...last year it didn´t have toilet seat on it and you had to dip water from the next room to actually flush it. Now it is a fully functional BYOT toilet...that is "Bring Your Own Toiletpaper". Unfortunately, they don´t have a sink or anything by it to wash your hands....ironic for a hospital....we have gone through a ton of antibacterial gel. As we were leaving today at around 8 pm, the "waiting area" was empty except for a boy about 8 or 9...when asked why he was there, we found out his dad was one of our patients earlier in the day. His dad is going to be staying in the hospital for a few days, and didn´t have anywhere to leave his son, so his son was just planning on staying in the waiting room for the next few days! He was even taking notes to find out if his dad would need medication when he got home! We couldn´t believe it--so Rosa, one of the anesthesiologists is going to take him home for the night. Before we left, we gave him some food we had brought with us....it was just heartbreaking. That´s about all my news...need to get to bed now.

Day 3 at Atlantila Hospital

After the whirlwind of red-eye flights and total submersion in Spanish we are able to sit and reflect back on the past 3 days.

Day one consisted of 3 cases starting with an open nephrolithotomy on a 34 y.o female followed by a repair of an undescended testicle on and 8 y.o boy and then an TURP. All of this pretty new to me. Judy just jumped right in and is an excellent surgical circulating nurse. And Jodi can now tell you the names of all of the tools necessary for Urological procedures.

Day 2 we picked up the pace a bit and completed 5 cases; 3 TURP's and open bladder stone removal and a pelvic sling. I actually got to scrub the pelvic sling since our surgical nurse was scrubbed and assisting with the open bladder stone removal in the neighboring room. I was a little nervous but Dr Moore was very patient. I knew what instruments he was asking for except for Alice Clamps(spelling?) But now I know what they are.

Day three(today) we got a break and our surgeon called it a day after 3 patients and we left at 7pm. The first two cases were double procedures. I'm actually too tired to ellaborate any further on the day.

I hope you are all enjoying our blog and look forward to hearing from some of you. We've had two straight days of pretty heavy rain but we were inside for most of it as our lunches are catered and delivered to the hospital. Keeping our fingers crossed for dryer weather for next week.

Cris

Our first day of surgical procedures. Just wanted to show you all what we are up to. Notice the clock on the wall above Judy? That is pm!

Long days and short nights!

Hi everyone...we just finished our 2nd day of work. We are working 12 hour days in the surgical ward...lots of interesting stuff going on. If you want to know what the hospital looks like, imagine every scary movie you have seen that takes place in an old haunted sanitorium...very old with lots of cold white tile. We see a lot of things that scare us in terms of being sanitary, but they do the best they can with what they have. Today it was pouring rain so by the end of the days there was a lot of water dripping from various places on the ceiling. There are always people lined up waiting to be treated and people who come to plead their case in hopes of getting in to see us. All the locals that work there are very nice to us and really appreciate us being there. Our whole team is really great and a lot of fun. I am the only non-medical person on the team so I am in charge of supplies, records, and team funds. Cris, Judy and the rest of the team spend most of the time in the operating rooms. While they are there, if they aren´t needing things, I usually play with kids who are lined up in the hallway waiting to be treated or coming out of surgery....these kids are not allowed to have their parents there, so they are usually very scared and crying. This morning there was this beautiful little girl--probably 4 or 5 years old. Her entire right arm and torso were burned when a boiling pot of beans fell off the stove on to her. It was so sad. They have given me the opportunity to sit in on some of the surgeries, but I am afraid if I see blood I will get sick or pass out. Maybe by the end of the trip I will get up the courage. We are all doing well--enjoying the experience and learning a lot!

Jodi

Buenas tardes amigos y amigas,

What a day it has been. After spending a frustating morning trying to connect the wrong cables to the wrong equipment and trying to locate other basic needs (like iv tubing), we started our surgical rotation by removing kidney stones with an open nephrolithotomy. By the grace of God, the patient survived (after a very difficult general anesthesia and losing about 800cc´s of blood). Oh, did I mention we had no idea what her hematocrit was pre-op and there was no type & cross done, so no blood available? We are comforted by the knowledge that she would not have had her stones removed at all had we not been there, and she is now stone-free. Hopefully, we will find her doing well when we round on her tomorrow. Our next patient was an 8 year old with an undescended testicle. How could we be so lucky? For our grand finale, we cystoscopically removed a very large bladder bladder stone from a 34 year old male. I could tell you so much more, but after working a twelve hour day and surviving a near death experience in a taxi on the way home, I just don´t have the energy. I hate to admit it, but we had dinner at Pizza Hut tonight (which is just down the block from our hotel) and it was delicious . . . Heineken and real Honduran pizza! We´ve been told that Honduras is ¨the land of Murphy´s Law¨ and we are now all true believers! Until manana.

Judy

Hola!

Well, the journey was long but after a flight from Seattle to Houston, Houston to San Pedro Sula (We sat on the runway in Houston for an hour1/2) and a three hour bus ride we made it to our destination, the Grande Hotel Paris in Le Ceiba. To say the least, we all slept really well last night.

This morning we made it to the lobby at 9am to meet a group of fellow IHS helpers to pick up shipped supplies at the Red Cross to deliver them to the hospital that we will be working at. There are 3 operating rooms, one of which will be ours to use. We will be working with a Urologist for the first week. Week two we will be working at the Red Cross in a medical clinic. I forsee a lot of hard work ahead of us. But all well worth the effort.

Thanks for checking in. We´ll try to figure out the picture thing soon!

Only a few hours until we leave for the airport! What started out as an afterthought, ended up being a very successful project. Since we planned to only take a carry on, and we are allowed on free checked bag, I decided I'd collect some clothes to take down and donate to the locals. Well, when I started telling people about it, it totally snowballed. Because I have a lot of friends with kids and received a lot of kids clothes, I located an orphanage in the city and emailed the director. As it turns out, they work closely with IHS, which is the organization we are going with, and they will be meeting us at our welcome banquet. I ended up getting about 80 lbs of clothes and shoes to take down, and I know Cris also collected some! THANK YOU everyone for your generosity---you are going to make a lot of kids happy! Here is a link to the website for the orphange: http://www.helpinghonduraskids.org Here are some pictures I took of some of the donated stuff and also the packed bags. If there was one thing I learned in the military, it is make your bag easy to identify, hence the PINK duct tape. (It also helps to repair minor rips too, but I am pretty sure you will never see any of that on Rick's bag!) :)

4 Days til our arrival

Greetings,

Thanks for checking out our travel blog. Jodi, Judy and I fly out of Seattle at midnight this coming Thurs. night. Our assignment has the three of us together at a hospital in La Ceiba. So far we know we will be working with a Urologist for our first week, the second weeks duties have not been verified yet.

Hopefully we will have a chance to visit an internet cafe to upload photo's to keep everyone updated on the work we are involved with.

Thanks for checking in!

Cris