Life never turns out quite the way you expect it to…
This will be the final blog entry for our stay at Guadalupe, as we have returned home a little early due to a family medical issue. Just as we saw in the lives of our patients in Ecuador—and, honestly, as we see daily in the lives of our patients here at home—God's plans for us are often not the same as the plans we imagine for ourselves. We can only pray and trust that they are, by divine design, the right plans, even if we do not fully understand them at the time…
Our last week at Guadalupe was much like the previous weeks: clinic starting at 0800; lunch with the sisters at 12 noon sharp and dinner at 1800. Sunrise and sunset, as they are all year long in Ecuador, a little after 6am and 6pm, respectively. Rain nearly every day—sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes a few hours. Everything radiantly alive—green, green, green, with little sparkles of every other color you can think of scattered about here and there on plants and vines.
The patients, too, were more or less the same: people coming in for assessment in advance of the plastic surgeons coming in November and the ophthalmologists coming in January; children coming in with their parents with a request for medications to "desparacitar" (to de-parasitize); lots of gastritis; various allergies; and a random assortment of ailments familiar anywhere—diabetes, high blood pressure, headaches, etc.
Two patients stand out from the rest, however. One was an older woman, mid 70's, bent and stooped making her look more like she was 90, walking with a short stick as a cane. A son accompanied her and asked if there was anything we could do to make her better. Unfortunately, her degenerative arthritis was so advanced, there was really no easy way to reverse the damage already done, and knee and hip replacements do not appear to be realistic options in Ecuador for most people. Perhaps our emphasis should be on minimizing falls? Yes, the son replied, that would help. After demonstrating the use of a taller stick as a cane and encouraging the son to construct a homemade front-wheeled walker, using an office tray as an example and sketching them a model, they left sad but determined.
The other patient was a 19 year old woman who came in with her mother for a pre-op evaluation for the plastic surgeons. She previously had a cleft lip repair performed many years earlier, but still had a disfiguring scar that they hoped could be revised. She also had an extremely narrow palate with an extra tooth and what appeared to be a very small persistent gap. Throughout the interview and examination, the patient said nothing, as her mother provided the history and answered all questions. Concerned about cognitive issues in addition to the cleft, we asked if the patient could talk with us me directly. Speaking with a pronounced lisp, she said she could. Was there anything else she would like to talk about? After a few moments of silence during which mother and daughter simply looked at each other, we asked if the patient had thinking problems. No, they said. Can you read, we asked, probably not in the best way possible. No, the mother replied, she never went to school. Apparently, she tried a couple of times as a young girl, but the other children made fun of her deformity and her lisp, and she and her mother simply decided that she not go. In their remote rural village (a few hours from Guadalupe), no one intervened. Most likely our suggestion to try again now, as an adult, will not be possible, though we are hopeful she will return to the clinic for the repair and for more encouragement…
After years of contemplation and months of planning, our time at Guadalupe was far too short. Still, it was a blessing. Our memories of the people, of amazing nurse Amanda and the clinic staff, of the sisters, and of our Austrian and German dental colleagues and housemates will remain with us "por los siglos de los siglos" — forever and ever.
Danielle and Marc
