Honduras

So a while ago a few of the surgeons that Ben works with sent out an email inviting others to join them on a surgical medical mission trip. At first, the destination was the Dominican Republic. Um, yeah, count me in. However, as the weeks went on it was clear that the new facility being built in the DR would not be finished in time for 2022. So, it was decided to go to this organization's already established surgical facility in Honduras. Alright, still count us in. I mean, not as cool or beautiful as the DR, but the purpose of the trip was not a vacation and so it didn't matter - at least, it didn't matter so much.

So Ben and I joined about 2 dozen others from Montrose and headed to Honduras. There were nurses, CNAs, three surgeons, and general volunteers (including young children) along for the mission. We headed out on a Friday and were able to visit with Ben's parents for a little bit. Then we went to Joe's home and he took us to the hotel by the airport where the group was staying. An early 2am departure on the shuttle to the airport started our long journey . . . We got to Honduras on Saturday afternoon and took an old-school bus to our location - NPH. You can read it all about here. The surgical organization, which operates within NPH in Honduras is called One World Surgery. You can read it that group here. The drives on the bus (from and to the airports) exposed us to the country and boy was it poor. It literally made Costa Rica seem like a country full of millionaires. The poverty was astounding and saddening. It was crazy and I have never seen anything like it in person. Cardboard box homes with tires as foundations, cinder-block homes, just poor, poor, poor.

We got settled in to our nice rooms (nothing fancy, but nice and it was just Ben and I in our room which I was pleasantly surprised about) and had a dinner that night. The food actually was pretty gross those first few days. And not because it was Honduran - that would have been welcomed! It was like American foods - but was just kind of gross, ha. The food improved, especially when it became more typical of Honduran fare.

Anyways, Saturday afternoon we did join the children at NPH for their church service. Mass was quite different, owing to 1. It being different than an LDS meeting of course and 2. It being all in Spanish. But the kids were adorable and all seemed to join in all the songs - which there were a lot of during the service. Lots of singing. On Sunday we got a tour of the facility and took a little hike to get a good vista point of the area. It was pretty.

Monday started the week of working. There were several areas where the group was assigned - the OR (Ben, other OR nurses and techs, and, of course, the surgeons - Dr. Singh, Dr. Sara Judkins, and her husband Dr. Tim Judkins), pre-op, PACA, Phase 2, and general. The general volunteers were the non-medical people and children and did things around the facility - gardening, helping out in dentistry, and lots of food-prep stuff I think. I was assigned to the Phase 2 area - which is where patients go after recovering in PACU. It's where they are officially recovered and then given discharge instructions and then discharged home. All of their patients went home same-day, except for 2. This included all of their total-joint patients leaving that same day (in America it's standard to stay for at least 1 night, if not 2). The first total-knee patient walked out of surgery! Tough people for sure.

Phase 2 wasn't a great place for me. For several reasons. One, I am not a surgical nurse and so that was a bit new for me. I could have handled it if it was in my native language. But another reason it was hard: I didn't know the language. The Honduran nurse I worked with didn't know English, so it was a bit hard communicating. Then, of course, I couldn't communicate and assess my patients real well - and especially could not give them discharge instructions. Furthermore, it was just me in this area - no one else from my group. Everyone else had someone with them from America, but I was just all alone. Poor me. :) Oh well.

But, as fate would have it be, I ended up with a toothache. I think it started around Sunday and then by Monday I could tell it was getting worse. By Tuesday it was hurting significantly and started affected my sleep - I was getting a few hours of sleep. It was so lame! I visited the adorable Honduran dentist on Wednesday and she got me some antibiotics. By Thursday it was still miserable and now my jawline was swollen. Ugh. I was exhausted by the lack of sleep and just frustrated by this silly, yet painful, toothache. Karen, the dentist, wanted to check on me on Thursday and when she saw me she got me a stronger antibiotic and some Toradol. I have given lots of IV Toradol on the JRC and my patients seemed to love it. It's a very powerful NSAID and is only in injection form - either via IV or IM. Since I had no IV . . . Ben got to administer it to me in my bottom. How much fun I was having in Honduras! It hurt so bad - it was quite a large dose and afterwards my leg down to my foot just killed me. I would say after each injection, "No more. I cannot go through that again." But the next night would come and I decided it was worth a few extra hours of sleep and so I would get another shot. It helped quite a bit - the only downside was it didn't last all night. Oh well, it did give me a few hours extra of sleep and so I was thankful for it. (I got all the meds, etc., for free!)

Ben was having an awesome time - except for feeling badly for me. He was rocking it, really. They had long and challenging days in the OR, but they all seemed to love - including Ben. It was just so satisfying to be able to fix these crazy orthopedic problems and was mentally stimulating as they had to figure things out with less-than-ideal tools, etc. It was so cool that they were literally changing lives. What a cool thing to be a part of. 

We were usually done by 5, and sometimes even earlier like 3 or 4. There was always a dinner and sometimes an evening program, including karaoke on Wednesday. Ben has some pretty amazing singers among his co-workers! I wasn't feeling super great that night, but it was a fun evening. We'd chat in the evenings; the young crowd would often play ping-pong and stay up quite late.

I went and watched Ben's surgeries on Tuesday. It was cool to see what they did and so I did enjoy that day. I took Thursday "off" as I was exhausted and miserable by that point of the week (I was up by midnight that night and started extensively searching for flights into Salt Lake - where I had found some in-network dental providers . . . ). The volunteer manager gal never responded to my text about the possibility of me flying out on Thursday. Which was probably for the good and I really didn't think it would work out seeing as were where 2 hours, one-way, to the airport. By Friday I was still swelling up, but maybe the antibiotics were starting to work . . . Ben and I got done early and so we left the ranch and walked about 1/2 mile to a local Honduran restaurant. We just got some tortillas, meat, beans, etc., but it was delicious. It turned out that we were NOT supposed to have left the ranch, but there was some misunderstanding on the information sheet we all received. It's a long story, but I read about getting some local Honduran food "across from the surgery center" in their information packet. And, while there, a group of the Board of Directors were there and mentioned eating out at a place "across the street." "That must be it! I thought." But apparently it wasn't (it seems like at one point there was a food truck that was within the ranch, across from the surgery center) and Ben got a talking-to on Saturday morning as we were preparing to leave. Haha. I am still glad we did it! Although it was quite risky as driving on Honduras is crazy and, thus, walking along the road was probably even crazier. :)

Alright, on to my photos that are all completely out of order. Sorry. It seriously is so much work to fix.

The volunteers have a really nice area to stay - it was really pretty! The rooms were all on the outside and then the hammocks and outdoor area was in the middle of the square.

We ate in a large gym-like room that was part of our lodging area. Basically three sides were rooms and the 4th side was this big room for dinner, programs, ping-pong, etc.

Just another part of our lodging area. Right behind where we were sitting was the gym. Here are a few of the kids working on some crafts.

This is the outside of the volunteer lodging area. We are looking at the gym area, then the other three sides were the rooms. It was new and nice!

Wren, Myele, and Elie (CRNA) getting ready to help serve up dinner one night.

Ben getting ready for a surgery!

Ben and I at the surgical facility - the Phase 2 area, where I "worked," was behind us.

We had about a 10-minute walk each day to and from our lodgings to the surgical center. It was quite lovely. It wasn't super hot in the morning, but usually in the afternoons it was quite warm. We were there right as the rainy season was ending . . . so not as much rain as they can get at times. But there were a couple evenings where the rain just poured so hard for like 20 minutes. It was pretty cool and also did help cool it down for the evening!

Ben and I coming back from our escape-adventure, haha. That is the entrance to NPH behind Ben. It's gated and guarded. Funny story: when we left, of course there was a guard there. He was all cool about us leaving and said there would be no problem for us entering back in. So when we found out how we weren't supposed to leave, we were surprised that the guard just let us go (even though he did call and inform them that two of the volunteers had left . . .). Turns out the guard was new. :)

We arrived in Honduras! There was our fancy bus to take us to NPH. With all the windows down, it wasn't too bad. :)

Steve, the big guy, AKA Director of NPH, was there while we were there. Plus, he had a birthday while we were there. So we got the rare chance to hang out one night at the birthday party. The kids were cute and it was nice to get to interact a little bit with them. 

Some of the volunteers weeding the carrots, I think.

Sonja (RN in PACU), Lisa (funny and fun CRNA), Teresa (P.T.), and Wren again. :) I used to babysit Wren way back when she was a baby. :)

Another picture from my walk to work one morning.

Part of the school at NPH.

Ben and a local Honduran medical resident. Ben was actually the one doing the teaching here - showing him how to suture up this guy. Ben's quite a good suturer. I may have made up that word.

Ben and a local boy having an arm-wrestle during the birthday party. This boy was pretty proud of his strong muscles. Still, Ben beat him. :)

The restaurant we risked our lives to go to. 

Halloween night! A few had some costumes to dress up in.

Our hike on Sunday.

Ben studying up on his cases in our room. It was basically a bed, a bathroom, and a closet. But it had a nice tall ceiling with a lovely fan that helped cool down the room - a bit. 

Here we both are at the restaurant. I am covering up my swelling jaw, haha.

The vista point on the hike.

Every lunchtime the surgery center would feed us. Plus its staff. That's they way to do it America! We'd come down to the cafeteria and grab our food and sit and eat. It was usually pretty good.

Walker in his fancy purple and pink boxer shorts playing ping-pong.

Not the best picture, but here we all are in front of the entrance to our lodging center. 

And that's it!

Wait, it's not! The flying back home . . . oh was that no fun. Long story hopefully made somewhat shorter: Our flight was delayed when we checked in on Saturday. It was delayed about 5 hours. However, after waiting for a couple of hours at the airport, our flight was canceled (mechanical issues with plane in Houston?). So we then spent the next few hours trying to figure out plan B. At first we were told a whole new flight was being added for Sunday and we'd be on it. Then that wasn't the case and so then they were just to split up the group and add some to its already scheduled Sunday flight and some on the other airline flying to America on Sunday. But that wasn't going well . . . Eventually we got shuttled 2 1/2 hours to the airport. Some of us (Ben and I included) were able to get on a red-eye flight, while the others stayed at a hotel that night. As soon as Ben and I got off our red-eye flight at 6am in Newark, we headed to our United desk and asked them to put us on stand-by for the earlier flights to Denver. Three flights were heading that morning from Newark to Denver and we were scheduled for the latest one. I was past ready to be home. There were literally two available seats on the earliest flight from Newark to Denver and Ben and I were the first ones on stand-by and so we got the seats. Hallelujah. Dr. Singh, his son Arjun, Ben and I were the first ones to arrive back in Denver - by 10am. Ben and I were picked up by Joe and then had a nice lunch and visit with Joe, Britt, and Nicholas. We were on the road back home before noon and got to Montrose by 5. We were the first to make it back - poor Dr. Singh's car was broken into and was not drivable. So they had to get a tow-truck, rental car for them, etc., to come back to Montrose (Dr. Singh and his awesome assistant, Ben, had a big day at the hospital on Monday . . . So Dr. Singh was anxious to make it back . . . ).  The other red-eye people caught later flights into Denver but made it home that night. As for the group that stayed at the hotel? Their Sunday flight from Honduras to Houston was again delayed . . . meaning they ended up missing their connection to Denver. Meaning they finally arrived in Denver at about midnight Sunday night/Monday morning. They all stayed in a hotel that night and drove home Monday. Dr. Sara Judkins had to cancel her surgical cases for that day!

As for my tooth? I just had a root canal on it this past Wednesday. Aiyiyi.