Nicaragua

In May, I travelled to Nicaragua. Compared to many places I have been, travel was super easy! 3 hours to Texas, then 3 hours to Nicaragua. And, no jet lag! They are on the same time zone we are! We arrived in Managua on Wednesday night, and drove to Esteli Thursday afternoon. It was a 3 hour drive on a school bus with no air conditioning. Which is par for the course in Nicaragua! We had the windows down, until it started to rain. Then, it actually got a little cool.

Our hotel was nice and clean. There were 3 people to a room. This was a local mission, so there only 3 of us from the states. Everyone else spoke Spanish. Because of this, my roomates spoke Spanish. They were cute! One tried really hard to communicate. And, we used a lot of sign language. And, a lot of smiles! Our water only had an on or off switch, so you got the temperature you got! Sometimes, mildly warm, sometimes freezing cold.

We went to the hospital the next day to screen patients. We screened over 90 and 62 were selected for surgery. We selected several 3 month old infants with primary cleft lips. One struggled in surgery, so we cancelled one the next day. In all, we did cleft lip repair, cleft palate repair, burn and scar revision, and seperating finders of patients born with syndactyly.

The next 4 days were spent doing surgery! I was in pre/post op. Although the OR was in good condition, the pre and post op area was not. Mattresses were old and dirty. We had sheets the first day, but ran out after that. We used sterile drapes to cover the beds. When those ran out, we taped together chux. We didn't have IV poles, so we taped bags of fluid to the wall, or tied them to the ceiling with string. Always creative! Always an adventure! And, the bugs! Mostly flies! But, we also saw our share of cockroaches, rats and dogs in our pre and post op area.

Language was a bit of a problem. I worked with 1 nurse and 1 doctor. Neither spoke English. I made them repeat communication several times until I could pick up enough words learned in 7th and 8th grade Spanish class to figure out what they wanted. This is scary when they want is a medication I'm not familiar with, in quantities I don't understand. Some of them, narcotics. I always showed them the medication and syringe before giving these meds to make sure we were on the same page. Somehow, everyone survived!

The last day, we got to do a little sight seeing! We rode our bus up to a waterfall! The bus broke down on the way, so we had to get out and walk! We waited for hours for another bus, but finally found one. There was no place to turn around, so the bus had to back down the mountain. it was scary! Once we made it back to Managua, we went to a town called Grenada that was an old colonial town build by the Spanish. Very quaint! We ate dinner there, and flew out the next day! It was a good trip, and a good mission!

Dominican Republic

In January, some friends and I travelled to Dominican Republic, just for fun! We stayed at an all inclusive resort. It rained a lot, but the sun came out most days too! We went out on a glass bottom boat, whale watching, and relaxing on the beach. The highlight of our trip was hiking up the 27 waterfalls. We literally hiked up 7 of the waterfalls! It was not easy, but we had help! The water splashed in our face, frequently upsetting the integrity of my contacts. It was pretty cold too! But, what a blast! The waterfalls have smoothed away the rocks enough so that we could slide back down the waterfall!