The road to Panajachel is twisted, rough, steep, curvy, bumpy, chilling, inspiring, unpredictable . . . and life-changing. That also describes our day.
We packed up in the back of two pick-up trucks and had an adventuresome ride to La Jorge La Laguna. The ride while standing in the back of a pickup truck going up, down and around the road to our clinic today was not for the faint-hearted. There are no guard rails, rules or reason.
Our clinic today, including the dentist's office, was much more primitive.
The people we saw were traditional Mayans and all of their faces have a story to tell.
The face with the most important story today, however, belonged to 2 year-old Aron. He was my second patient of the day. He was lying limp in his mother's arm and was burning with fever. Once I was able to get him unswaddled, it was obvious that he was struggling to breathe due to pneumonia and was gravely ill.
Sarah quickly assisted in giving him a breathing treatment while Trina, our nurse, gave him an injection of antibiotic. He perked up, but we knew he needed more than what we had to give so we made arrangements for more antibiotic shots and breathing treatments for the next several until he was hopefully well enough to take oral antibiotics.
When we checked on him again several hours later, however, he was again limp and struggling for every breath as he laid in his mother's arms. Within minutes, we were loading Aron and his mother into a surprisingly modern ambulance that was stationed less than a quarter mile away from our clinic. As I began to close the door, however, Aron's mother let out a heart-wrenching cry . . . He had stopped breathing.
I jumped in the ambulance and did CPR all the way to the hospital while Aron's mother sobbed in the back seat. He was still lifeless when we arrived and handed him off to the team of doctors in the emergency room, but we were able to revive him enough to give us hope. When we left, he still was not able to breathe on his own so a nurse was continuously at his side "bagging" him because the hospital does not have a ventilator. They were trying to get Aron transferred to a larger hospital several hours away, but the ambulance that was supposed to transport him broke down on the way to get him and the volunteer ambulance that brought him earlier in the day, couldn't afford the gas to get to the city.
As I said above, the road to Panajachel is very rough . . . . unpredictable . . . . . and unsettling.
No matter how great your faith, moments like this still make you wonder "Why?" We left money with Aron's family hoping they could use it to buy gas for the ambulance.
After the clinic, five of us, including Trina, drove to another town to pick up vitamins that had been donated. (Our supply of medications is still in the hands of the Guatemalan government.) It was not any easy drive and it was late, but we insisted that we make one stop along the way. We stopped so that Trina could see Teresa.
Teresa is a vibrant, healthy 9 year-old Guatemalan girl that Trina met on her first trip with HOH. At that time, Teresa was only 2 months old and weighed a mere 5 pounds. Like Aron, she came to the clinic struggling for every breath and close to death. Trina ended up taking her to the "local" hospital more than an hour away and stayed at her bedside all night breathing for her with a hand ventilator. It seemed hopeless so after 24 hours so they decided to remove Teresa's breathing tube and return her to the comfort of her mother's arms and God's hands.
When they returned the next day, Teresa was still alive --- and when Trina returned a year later, Teresa was clearly thriving without any signs of permanent impairment.
When Trina made her first came to Guatemala with Hands of Hope, she did not believe in God but now she gives one of the most moving testimonies you will ever hear.
As I write, I still do not know God's will for Aron's life, but when we stopped to see Teresa, we also found her 14 year-old sister very sick in bed with fever. "Luckily," I had a supply of antibiotics with me because I had done mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Aron.
Luck and coincidence are for those would do not believe in God.
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