Mending Bodies and Healing Hearts

     Over the past several years here at Hospital Loma de Luz, our patient acuity (the level of how sick a patient is) has been rapidly increasing. The hospital is open 24/7 with an on-call OB provider for our patient who arrive in labor, on call general provider, and an on-call surgeon to take care of any type of patient who comes in our gate. Our increasing acuity has resulted in our increasing need for blood transfusions. In the States, the Red Cross bus comes around doing blood drives and then sends the units of blood to hospitals where it goes into the Hospital's blood bank. It is kept in the blood bank until it is needed for a patient. If one of my patient's needed blood, I would go to the blood bank and they would have the blood ready for me. We do things a little bit different here in Honduras. We don't have a blood bank we ARE the walking blood bank.          Upon arriving in Honduras to serve here at Hospital Loma de Luz, every missionary is tested for thei

Our surgeon Dr. Alexander performing abdominal surgery with scrub techs Alan and Bayron       As nurse, I have always prided myself in the fact that I can handle all things gross. Anything that comes out of any orifice of anyone's body (even the ones that shouldn't be there) blood, gore, severed limbs... I've got this. I'm nurse. It's what I do...aside from my foot fetish. I don't care how clean they are. I don't touch yours so you don't touch mine. Deal?       Usually I do not spend too much time in the operating room. I mostly work in our in-patient ward, labor and delivery room, and emergency room.  In January, it was decided that it would be really helpful during emergencies, if I was trained to assist in the operating room. I spent the month of January working along side of our Honduran operating room assistants (called scrub techs) learning where everything is, the names of countless surgical tools and instruments, how to set up the operatin