Monday, February 09, 2009

Team emergency

The day started out with blue skies and warming temperatures. Our team from Old Town Christian Outreach Center just finished their orientation with Sharon and Pastor Don was just getting started with his seminar on the "Last Days". I had just taken several people to the hotel to pick up some things when I got the dreaded call - one of the team members had fallen into a foundation hole in the new clinic and seemed to have a broken leg. By the time I got back to the clinic, our fire chief was also pulling up in the local ambulance. We took our patient to the local hospital for xrays and, sure enough, she had a very bad spiral fracture of her femur. Praying for wisdom, we started the process of trying to get approval from her travel insurance to helicopter her out to the capital to have urgent surgery. About 5 hours later and being on the phone most of that time, we had permission but were unable to get anyone to come that late to our area. Our dear patient has been a trooper all day. We had no heavy duty pain meds at the hospital so she was given what was available and has been able to tolerate the pain. The local missionary doctor at the hospital "just happened" to be returning today to Chichicastenango after living in the capital area for a year! God is always coming through for us!! He helped to stabilize her and we will fly her out with one of our nurses from ASELSI early in the morning and she will hopefully have surgery tomorrow morning.

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