As I sit here at our big
kitchen table in the missionary house, distracted for a moment by a gecko
running up the wall and the ocean waves crashing right outside the window, I
can hardly believe that tomorrow marks 7 weeks of being here in Honduras (and 3.5 months in Central
America !) I want to
apologize to anyone who has checked my blog out over the past several weeks and
has been disappointed by the lack of updates…internet availability is
definitely much more limited here than I had previously thought. Now that work and life here is beginning to
settle into some sort of a rhythm, however, I am hopeful that I will be able to
be faithful to writing monthly blog posts!
Also letter-writing is definitely a much better option here than I
thought. I would love to hear from you
if you have minute to drop a letter in the mail!
These past 6 weeks have been a time of so many blessings and
(good) challenges so far! There is so so
much to say (and luckily I have 2 years of posts to expound moreJ) but one of the greatest things so far for me
has been getting back into my nursing—and practicing as a nurse practitioner
here for the first time! The other
nurse, Ashley, and I are responsible for the health of all the 40 children at
the Farm as well as the staff, including our Honduras house parents, maintenance
and security workers, our Franciscan sisters, and the 20 current
missionaries. The kids have been pretty
healthy overall but we have had our share of normal childhood issues such as
strep throat being shared around the community a few weeks ago. We also follow
some children on longterm medications and work closely with a psychiatrist and
our social workers. In addition to our Finca community, we also serve the wider
community of several small villages ranging from right outside the Finca gate
to a good walk up into the mountains. In
the clinic Ashley and I function as receptionist, nurse, provider, and
pharmacist! I have been really
pleasantly surprised by the variety of medications in our pharmacy, and that is
all thanks to some very generous annual donations. We have a small lab in our
clinic where we can check hemoglobin for anemia, blood sugar, and perform urine
tests, and I am exploring our options for working with the local hospital to
collect more samples and bring them in to their lab. Our patients are mostly women and their
children, and their complaints range from sick visits to well-baby checks to
injuries.
It has been wonderful getting to know so many of our
patients—our Finca neighbors. We also
take care of several patients with various chronic diseases who need closer
care and follow-ups. Some of these
patients aren’t able to make the walk to the clinic (it took us about 2.5 hours roundtrip), so we try
to visit them in their homes. The other day Ashley and I drove up into the
mountains to visit a few of our older patients.
We had to park the truck a ways outside of the village, because the road
is so terrible and muddy during the rainy season (last week we got ourselves
stuck in a rut and had to be helped out…but that is another storyJ). Then
we walked up this steep, narrow, rather treacherous path up the side of a
mountain to get to our first patient’s house. We sat down with her in the one main room of their
house where all 8-10 people spanning 3 generations sleep together. Our patient is a dear, loving older woman with
uncontrolled diabetes and high blood pressure, but no matter how poorly she is
feeling, she always makes time to talk with us and thank us for coming. Today her headaches were much less severe,
however, and when we checked her blood pressure, it was better controlled than
ever before on her new medication regimen. He blood sugars are still very high, even with
max doses of oral diabetes medications and she should be taking insulin, but
insulin is very difficult to find and expensive here in Honduras, not to
mention our patient does not have a refrigerator! I am exploring options for getting her
insulin though- God willing we will get here started. We were able to talk in depth
about good diet choices, but when usual diets consist of large amounts of rice
and tortillas and few protein choices besides beans, it is difficult. After our
visit we all walked outside her house, and as always I was blown away by the
view of the ocean and the verdant green mountains- incredible! Our patient and her husband thanked us
profusely and sent us on our way with fresh bananas, but as usual I left
feeling blessed and grateful for being able to be a part of these people’s
lives here in Honduras .
There are so many other blessings here at the Farm too- the
children for sure, the community of missionaries I live with, the Faith of the
people, but I thought I would close by sharing a few interesting/fun facts! There are many “creatures” around here,
including inside our house…mice and insects you might expect, but what about
geckos and scorpions? (Yes, we have
them!) The other day I was walking down
the road, which is heavily shaded by trees, to our women’s faith-sharing group
in a nearby village, and I felt something brush past my face and then heard a “smack”
on the road nest to me. One of the other
women started yelling my name and pulling my arm and I looked down to see a
big, bright yellow-green snake slithering into the brush. He had just fallen out of the tree and landed
at my feet! Whether he was purposely
targeting me and my friend saved my life, I’ll never know, but my heart was
beating fast for a long time afterward! Many of the other interesting/shocking facts
about life here, have become more commonplace to me now, and I can hardly
remember a time when we had hot showers, dishwashers, and washing machines or
could cook over a stove anytime we wanted. We have to conserve our chimbo (don’t ask me
exactly what that is, but it’s what lets us turn on our stove!) so we cook many
of our meals over a fogon fire outside. Speaking of which, I am cooking dinner
tonight, so I need to go get the fire started and get the fish cooking soon, so
I better sign off. Living simply has it’s
challenges, but it has been an adventure so far for sure!
I hope you are all doing very well and I look forward to
updating you more very soon! God is
blessing me here! Thank you for your
thoughts and prayers and well wishes and for keeping in touch in whatever ways
you can!
Love,
Laura
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