Medical Mission Trip 2007

More photos

2007-07-19T17:47:00.001-07:00

These crayons and coloring books traveled all the way from Massachusetts

This trip is not all about work.

This is the corner of the hospital guesthouse with the foothills of the Andes beyond

Dr. Wootters at work

Tuesday

2007-07-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sam in the pharmacy

Waiting for their prescriptions

Posted by Jim K.

A pleasant day today for those of us on the clinic team.

Sam, John, Peter, and I joined our 15 or so colleagues in traveling a short distance to a school affiliated with a church we worked at last week.

We’ve been learning about the community development programs that proliferate in this area. They tend to include church, school, clinic, library, economic projects, etc. Many are affiliated with international groups such as World Vision or Compassion International. In this entrepreneurial age, the international group provides funding and training but gives great responsibility and latitude to the local group.

The people who run the school we were at today were extremely grateful. They spent the last hour of the day or so making for each of us a small basket with an artificial flower and ribbon with Bolivia’s colors.

Mid-day we experienced again the ways of the country, especially regarding attitudes toward time. Having forgotten that they planned to make lunch for us, we’d made sandwiches. Their lunch, we were subsequently told, would arrive for us at 11:30. At 12 we stopped taking patients for the morning. After an hour of soccer or reading (depending on age) we decided we better eat our packed lunch so we could get back to work. Sure enough, just as we’d finished our packed lunch, they marched in with large pots full of food. Of course, we had to eat it, so it was two o’clock before, stomachs extended, we could get back to work.

This approach to time is one of the many cultural attributes it can be hard for northerners to adjust to, and its implications are broad. The very interesting book I’m reading (Whispering in the Giant’s Ear by William Powers) portrays, among many other things, the ways in which the proclivity for people here to live in the present has had extensive economic and political consequences.

The Williamstown group is relatively healthy, though almost all of us have had our times of not feeling our best. I’m not sure how much has been related to altitude, but I suspect quite a bit.

Having not read the previous postings, I don’t know how much people have described the physical surroundings, which are dramatically beautiful. The mountains make the Berkshires look like speed bumps. There’s so little atmosphere at this altitude that the number and brightness of the stars are astonishing. For the same reason, the quality of light is brighter and clearer than anything I’ve seen.

As you can see from the photo of Sam working away today in the pharmacy, much of our days are spent indoors, though we try to get outside as much as possible.

Only one and a half more days of clinic work, then packing, then a travel day Friday to Santa Cruz, then for the Williamstown group a couple days of R and R, and then the long trip home, though we hope not as loooong as the trip down.

Some Pictures

2007-07-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

We're finally on the internet! Below is Jim M's posting which tells you all we're up to. We'll put up some more images tomorrow.

We found this Mohawk Trail plate in an antique shop in downtown Cochabamba!

John and his fine job of sorting surgical gloves

Laurie finding goodies for a seven year-old patient

Peter giving a fluoride treatment

Waiting in line at Clinic

In the Clinic waiting room

2007-07-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

Friday, 13 July
Hospital de la Esperanza [Hospital of Hope]
Anocaire, Vinto, Cochabamba, Bolivia

Posting: Jim Mahon

Dear St John’s staff and parishioners,
We are all fine, apart from a cold making the rounds. We finally arrived on Sunday night and started work on Monday. We’ve now developed a pretty good rapport with the staff at the Hospital of Hope, where almost half of us work in arranging and carrying out surgeries. The rest of us are on a clinic team that goes out to neighborhoods and villages to see patients and dispense medicine, including fluoride treatments to dental patients.
We all started slowly on Monday. For the clinic team this was on purpose, since they needed to work the bugs out of their routines without the press of hundreds of patients. For the surgery team it was the result of a big departure from the usual practice of MMI delegations. This hospital is so good that rather than take over the whole thing or a wing of it, as happens when the facilities are badly used or substandard, we have had to work closely with very competent staff who do not (with good reason) just allow us to displace them. So it took a few days to work out how to coordinate everything we do. I think the hospital staff were a bit surprised by the volume of work we have added, however, even though the “surgery campaign” (our presence in town) has been advertised around here for a while.
From the medical side, it turns out that we have lots and lots of gallbladder cases, many with incredibly large stones. Bart says he’s not tired of them yet. In fact he says that it might not be possible to get tired of gallbladders.
As for what each of the others has been doing, here’s a general rundown: Laurie has been coordinating the scheduling of surgeries; Adrienne has been an OR assisting nurse; Jim and John Kolesar have been on the clinic team, Jim as assistant pharmacist and John as a “runner” who takes patients around; Sam has been doing both of these; Peter has been giving fluoride treatments as well as passing out dental care paraphernalia; and I have been helping with patient intake for all the hospital’s cases between 8 and noon, then translating for surgery consults and post-op family communication. Our friend Evan Kapanga found some very prickly amoebas in Peru and is sick but improving.
All in all, we are very grateful for this opportunity to share our faith, and through us the faith of you our congregation, with our sisters and brothers in this part of Bolivia. We look forward to sharing more details of our stay upon our return.
Yours in Christ,
Jim

We're not there yet!

2007-07-07T15:38:00.000-07:00

Our adventure began yesterday morning (Friday) at 6:00 a.m. in the parking lot of St. John’s. We managed to pack 18 suitcases and our carry-ons into 3 station wagons. (Thanks for driving, Judy!) Not with us was Jim M, who still did not have his passport. After 13 weeks of waiting, calling, and harassing the passport folks, they finally told him that he might be able to pick it up in Boston on Friday morning. The plan was for him to meet us at Logan for our noon flight to Miami.

Jim finally caught up with us when we were nearly to the front of the line at Logan. (See Relieved Jim, at right) Once we got our tickets and had checked 16 of our 18 bags, the woman at the desk stopped us from putting the 17^th bag on the scale. There’s an embargo on extra luggage to Bolivia, she says. I made my best puppy eyes and said, but this is for a medical mission trip! This is not our personal stuff! No go. Unfortunately, all 16 bags had already gone down the baggage hole. One of the remaining two bags was all-important amoxicillin and surgical gloves. The other was my personal bag! Fortunately, not all travelers had second carry-ons, and my own bag contained a bunch of mesh bags. We stuffed essential contents into the festive-colored bags, left the rest in Jim M's, car, and trooped onto the plane in good time. Jim K’s carry-on was the box of amoxicillin, and it has become his constant and beloved companion.

At Miami, we were scheduled for a two-hour layover until our next flight to Lima. This turned into a six-hour layover. (See Peter and Jim’s Box, serving as card table, at right.) Needless to say, we missed our connection from Lima to Santa Cruz. We have been put up in a nice hotel in Lima, where we are happy to take advantage of the nice food and even nicer long hot water showers. We’ve been catching up on sleep, playing cards, watching TV, and walking around a bit. (We’re too far from the center of the city to do any meaningful site seeing.)

The original plan was for us to take the same flights, just a day later, but all flights from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba are filled until Tuesday. So we will take our midnight flight to Santa Cruz, arriving at 5:00 a.m. We will then take a 12-hour bus ride to Cochabamba. (The flight time for this trip is 45 minutes.) Our estimated time of arrival in Cochabamba is ~8 p.m. on Sunday.

Quote of the day: “We’re happy, it’s just hard to show emotion at this point.” - Sam

-Adrienne

Almost Departure Day

2007-07-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

We're finally able to check off most of the items on our to do lists as our departure date arrives. Passports-done; Yellow fever inoculations-done; Flight bookings-done; Packing-maybe not all done, but we've at least got all of out supplies, equipment, and donations done. It makes us get a little teary eyed to see it all, 13 bins and duffel bags full of goodies and a wallet full of cash for anaesthesia and other supplies we'll need to buy there. We're overflowing with gratitude for the generosity of our church community and that of our friends at Saint Stan's school in Adams who adopted our mission project for their "Make A Difference" week. Here's some of our bags piled up in the church library:

And here are the medical information cards and the buttons that a handful of cheerful parishioners worked on for the past couple of weeks. It may not look like you idea of adornment, but folks love them:

We feel so blessed to be the ones who get to give this all away---in person.

Onto some details about the trip....

This is the 7th year that a group from Saint John's, Williamstown has participated in a medical mission project with MMI- Medical Ministry International (http://www.mmint.org/). In previous years we've had groups go to the Dominican Republic, but this year we are headed to Cochabamba, Bolivia where a new project will be starting headed by Francis Perez, one of out Dominican MMI friends. Cochabamba is in central Bolivia in a valley in the Andes. Some valley...it's 8700 feet elevation.

To read more about Cochabamba, you can start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba