Lunes en Loma de Luz

Today was our first day at in the hospital. We arrived to the clinic at 7:45 AM to a full waiting room. We quickly oriented to the new EMR on site and started to see our full patient schedule for the day. Many of the patients were surgical candidates, and we even operated on 3 of them today!  We took turns seeing patients, setting up the OR, and operating, with just enough time to find a lunch plate in between.

We were able to use our new audiometry application Shoebox Audiology in a quiet room. We haven't had the ability to perform audiometry here before, so we were excited to embark on this new clinical adventure. We had to find a makeshift sound proof room, aka La Bodega, and were successfully able to perform an air conduction hearing test.

The theme of the day of thyroids and cleft lip and palates. We saw everyone from a 2.5 year old girl with a thyroglossal duct cyst to a 50 year old with 10 year history of growing thyroid nodules that now happen to be the size of multiple baseballs.

After a quick return to the dorms for dinner, we checked on our first surgical patients today. Our little 7 month old cleft lip repair was chugging away at his milk bottle. He looked mighty cute.

We are thankful for another successful day and hope for positive outcomes for all of our patients!

Arrival to Hospital Loma de Luz

After an early departure from Seattle on Saturday morning, we reached Roatan, Honduras. We loaded our carts and luggage this morning before sunrise early (a stack nearly as tall at Kaalan). We traveled via large van, then a high speed ferry to La Ceiba followed by a two hour ride through pothole-ridden dirt roads to reach the Hospital Loma de Luz in Balfate.



We settled into the staff housing and oriented our newest team members to the area and the wild creatures that we might encounter (snakes, scorpions, spiders, oh my!). We took our crates replete with donated supplies to the hospital and unpacked. We readied equipment, set up the OR and clinic, and sorted through the 250 lbs of American donations. Sapna's biceps are sore from the heavy lifting and activity of the day.