Mending Bodies and Healing Hearts

     Strept throat is one of those things that we all get at least once in our lives. I, for one, have had it several times. Not a big deal right? One just goes to the doctor for antibiotics and that's that. Did you know that antibiotics that one is prescribed for strept throat are not actually for your throat but to protect your heart? Left untreated, the  group A streptococcus virus can cause inflammation of the kidneys and rheumatic fever leading to joint pain and  potentially damage to the valves of the heart.   That is what happened to Digna.  Digna is a twenty-one year old woman who had untreated strept throat at one time. It had infected the mitral valve of her heart causing it to narrow significantly. This narrowing of the mitral valve causes increased pressure in the heart which in turn, has caused Digna's heart to enlarge significantly.  Digna's enlarged heart          Upon coming into our clinic abo...

     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 mi...

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 ...

Well it's that time again. Time for another mandatory trip out of Honduras to renew my visa. I can't believe how fast the past almost 4 months have gone by. It feels like I just returned to Honduras from my last trip. Although I am loving the chance to go back to the States every three to four months, the trips are quite a hassle but always are an adventure even though something always seems to go wrong. I only left Hospital Loma de Luz this morning but I can already tell you that this adventure is no different. I already have a story that I can add to my growing collection such as when my flight into Honduras was diverted to El Salvador (a completely different country than I was supposed to be in), a nearly missed runway collision in Dallas, and getting stranded in the Atlanta airport for two days. It the mist of it all God has always had his hand of protection on me. Through all the mishaps I have met some amazing people who I never would have met otherwise, got El Salvado...

Each of those charts represents a soul with their own unique story       When it rains, it pours here. Both literally and figuratively. While most of America is digging their cars out of snow, Honduras is in the middle of it's rainy season. The yearly rainy season brings strong rain storms almost every afternoon and sometimes we do not see the sun for days. The rain and freezing cold temperatures of 70 degrees in the evenings tends to keep people in their houses. There are multiple rivers in the nearby towns that become difficult to cross due to flooding which results in fewer clinic patients and fewer patients coming into the emergency room after clinic hours.  December and January have been fairly calm but when it rains, it pours!          After two very calm weeks over Christmas, everyone decided to come to the hospital on New Year's Day. I was just about to head out the door to church when our new Honduran nurse, Melissa, fra...

      Some days are harder than others. Some days are full of patients that are here for routine operations such as having their gallbladder removed or come in for stitches in their cut finger. These are the good days, when we can laugh with the patient and make lighthearted conversation. And then there are hard days, when it seems like every patient is very ill and needing a lot of attention. Those days can bring lots of talks with patients about death, the life thereafter, and sweet discussions about God. Sometimes these patients are children such as baby Isaac who was brought in from our Children's home due to severe respiratory distress just yesterday. We thought for sure that he was going to die. We fought to give him his every breath. If he stopped breathing, he was going to die as we do not have a ventilator small enough to support his tiny lungs. It's so hard to watch a baby struggle. His tiny chest collapsing with every breath. With a lot of IV fluids and some de...

 As several other single missionary women and I were sitting at the hospital bus stop waiting for the church van to pick us up this morning, we started talking about culture. I am not entirely sure of what started the conversation but Julie said, "Sometimes I feel like as an American I don't really have culture." "Sure you have culture!" exclaimed Annie, "You have a very mixed culture. An American culture. Americans are very independent, value their individuality and privacy, have high expectations, and very success driven."   We went on to talk about the difference in American versus Honduran culture. Hondurans are very dependent on each other as a family unit and there is no such thing as privacy. Everyone knows everything about everyone even without Facebook. As a Honduran, if you are admitted in the hospital, everyone in your community knows you are there and what is wrong with you even if they don't personally know you. You might  even get...