Cuatro Dia

Day Four

The poor are many

and so-

impossible to forget.

      Roberto Soasa, Honduras Poet

We woke today all excited and full of energy as we prepared for our last day helping the

people of Honduras. The medical team went to a new site today in the small village of Chilupa. About a hundred people lined up outside the church where children were running on the street and climbing on the grating of the window. Mid-way through the day, we heard screams and a woman was carried in, head bloodied. As we got her story we learned that her boyfriend had hit her in the head with a rock. There police were outside, having been called to an assault. While we were assessing her gaping head wound for suturing she slumped over, limp in our arms, then started to seize. Her arms became rigid and her head arched back. We lifted her from her seat and laid her on the floor. The church was cleared of patients. She then stopped seizing, mumbled a few words, and a minute later started seizing again. The team held her head, was ready with an emergency kit of diazepam, and waited to see if the seizure would stop on its own, and after a few minutes it did. She was able to respond only with a few words. Knowing she had sustained significant trauma, we where able to get the police to agree to take her to the hospital. We carried her out to the police car through the throngs of people. Putting her in the back seat, we then walked back into the church. There was still work to be done - so after a few brief moments to process the event, it was back to seeing the next three hundred patient to finish the day.

The week is done. We all have that end-of-trip tired feeling. As the sun is beginning to rise over the mountains in the distance, as the birds are chirping in varied rhythms, a dog barks. The overhead fans cool the morning air. The good that transpired is clear, the work that remains is unending. As a group of doctors, nurses and others involved in bringing health-care to the people of this country we have shared an experience that is profound and will affect each of us in different ways. We have made connections with the people of Honduras, individuals - an old woman sharing her lessons of life, a young boy jumping up and down for a picture - we have created bonds with each other - and leave this country with lasting, sustaining memories of a land of immense beauty, strength, and resilience as well as a land of the poor. If there are lessons from this trip, the lessons are to believe in one's ability to do good; that people are people and that despite different cultures and backgrounds we share a common human connection; when we sit down across from one another we can smile together and cry together; that and when you reach out with your hands and minds and hearts and you can do things large and small; that when you open yourself to experience and when you make an effort and do something for another human being you can not help but to grow and learn and leave feeling better than when you arrived.

Our last day in El Progresso was, as always, bittersweet. Though we take pride in the work we've done so far, many still line the halls that we will not be able to care for. One such patient had a complex leg fracture that could not be repaired due to a lack of proper equipment. Having waited days for our team to heal him, the despair on his face as we explained the situation to him was heartbreaking.  

Such is the eternal dilemma faces that our group each year - lack of resources. Even with the selfless donations of friends, colleagues and vendors very generous to our cause each year, there are only so many supplies we can bring with us. Even though our team accomplishes so much with so little, It is frustrating to know that treatment exists for a patient here but simply can not be obtained.  

Still, we brought new life into the world, we mended limbs, we fixed hernias, we took away pain, we tense smoothed the brows of patients and put smiles back on the faces of their families. 

The flexibility of our team in the midst of the dearth of our first world comforts is one of greatest marvels of this trip. Memorable this year events include performing a surgical scrub without running water, one of our dedicated translators would pour water over the hands of a surgeon prepared to operate. Our surgeons would generally assist in OB cases and our OB docs would scrub into surgeries encountered that they have not seen since medical school. Even one of our audacious anesthetists stepped out from behind the curtain and scrubbed sterile OB With His Counterparts in a C-section. Their acumen and dedication to a positive outcome in any situation was apparent.  

Another trip to Honduras and for all those Involved, it was an experience infused with comraderie, compassion, fulfillment and a new perspective, that will continue to enrich our own lives as much as we have hope those we have touched this week.