Sunday, October 19, 2008

When it rains it pours

October 19, 2008

Well this is my first time blogging, I don´t know if there are any rules to the game, but here goes. The trip has been nothing short of adventurous so far. My flight from Atlanta to Mexico City was fairly uneventful. In fact I was pleasantly surprised at the upgrades in the Mexico City airport since the last time I flew through. Upon arriving to the gate of departure to Tapachula, I met our program leader, Dr. Theron Hawkins, and his lovely wife Joy, Grant Taylor, a urologist from Johnson City, TN, Doug Doehrer, our surgical tech from San Antonio, and Herb Barstow, a recently retired urologist from Columbia, MO. We ate, got to know each other (I knew immediately that Dr. Hawkins is a first-rate Texas story-teller), and prepared for the flight to Tapachula. Here´s where things got a little more adventurous. Initially the flight was going really well until I noticed an electrial storm off to the far right horizon. I really didn´t think much of this until the flight started getting bumpier and bumpier, the cloud cover was getting denser, and the rain was pounding the plane like we were flying through a sea of quarters. Judging by the length of time we had been in the air, I figured we should be close to our destination, however, our descent was anything but smooth. In fact, other than Doug who was fast asleep, everyone else was wide awake with firm grips on the arm rests. Each time we appeared close to landing the pilot pulled up and swung around. This happened about three times, at which point the pilot came on the speaker and announced that he couldn´t land because of the weather and he was going to Merida. Knowing a little Mexican geography, I knew Merida was way east and we probably could have flown back to Mexico City in about the same amount of time. I should mention that this is a tiny plane that maybe had about 3h worth of gas. We landed at the very small (read: tiny) airport at Merida and refueled. As we loaded back onto the plane, they announced that we were now going back to Mexico City. After some murmuring amongst ourselves, we made our way back to Mexico City. Now here comes the real drama. By this time, it is past 2am, we have literally hundreds of pounds of equipment for the mission trip, and they expect us to unload all the equipment from the conveyor, load onto a van to the hotel, unload everything again, recuperate, load everything back up and be back at the airport by 9am. Well fortunately, Dr. Hawkins, being blessed with the gift of gab, had made friends with one of the airline ticket counter ladies, and after a good bit of cajoling, phone calls, begging of security, and slow movement down the hallway, we were finally able to recheck all the equipment around 4am, get to the hotel and rest. The next morning we got up and had a marvelous breakfast and made our way back to the airport. We finally got on the flight to Tapachula, which went off without a hitch. As we approached the city, I noticed a couple of things: 1) we are really close to the coast, which I hope to be able to visit during our time here, 2) the landscape is quite green and lush, which only meant one thing, lots and lots of rain. More later. Anyway, we finally arrived Saturday afternoon, checked into the hotel and had a pretty chill day. It rained in the evening.

Sunday morning, we had devotional time and breakfast, then headed to the hospital, which is about 10 minutes outside the city. I should mention that now our group has grown to include Paul Church, a urologist from the Boston area, Jim Gallo and his wife, from Suffolk, VA (anesthesia), Dr. Roberto Rodriguez, a surgeon from Monterrey and facilitator for this trip, three nurses from Monterrey, Mayra, Ynes, and Sonia, and an Anesthesiologist from Monterrey, Dra. Mayra. We initially had word that we had only three cases, and we would spend most of the day unpacking and getting organized. Well, as it turned out 3 cases turned to 11, but I had a blast. I performed 2 orchiectomies, 3 or 4 cystos, and as the only doc with servicable Spanish, mucho, mucho translacion!

Tomorrow we have a prostatectomy, several TURPs, a few suprapubic prostatectomies, a cystolithopaxy, and I´m sure a few surprises. I can´t express how excited I am about the rest of the week, I am very happy with our team, and even happier that I am aboe to provide medical help to those in most need (without a pager in sight!). More on the patients later...

~Kmoses

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