Mission Trips: Country Club Christian Church

We complain constantly about the health care crisis in the United States, and it truly is a crisis when millions of poor children and their families (and some not so poor, comparatively speaking) don’t have insurance and therefore don’t have access to quality health care. Even those of us lucky enough to have insurance have trouble navigating the murky bureaucratic waters of HMOs. But in Kansas City, if you break your leg, if your baby is having fever-induced seizures, if you are having a heart attack…if you have any type of emergency health care crisis and you go to the emergency room, chances are you will be treated regardless of your ability to pay. It is far from an ideal situation, but it is something.

Here in Guadalupe, not only have they never heard of health insurance, they don’t even have access to doctors or hospitals or dentists, and even if they did, they couldn’t afford to go to one. There is a public health nurse and a clinic in Guadalupe, but the nurse is here infrequently, and we’ve learned that many of the villagers are hesitant to go to her.

In previous visits to Guadalupe, when our medical team has seen patients who were in critical condition, we have made arrangements for them to go into town to a hospital. Last year, a baby with a horrible wound on his leg surely would have died had we not made arrangements for him to be taken to the hospital and treated. We have learned he is okay now. But things are different this year. Early yesterday morning, we sent two patients to the hospital in Matagalpa – the boy, Raul, with the skin fungus around his eyes and his scalp; and the baby with the heart murmur.

Raul’s mother had taken him to the hospital before, but she did not want to take him this time around. She told us that she was scared to take him; she’d taken two other children to the hospital and they had both died. With our encouragement, she agreed to go, but she forgot to take her paperwork from previous visits, so the hospital refused to treat him. When she returned to the clinic in the afternoon to report to us, Carla sent her home to get her paperwork. When the mother returned with it, Carla found that it was from 1999, when he was 4 years old. He’s almost 13 now. And he still has a tragic skin fungus.

Sadly, the hospital also refused to treat the baby with the heart murmur because he didn’t have a referral from a Nicaraguan doctor. A doctor did listen to the baby’s heart and announced that rather than a heart murmur, “the baby’s heart has air in it.”

Bureaucracy indeed.

Yesterday morning Kamille treated a baby with a fever so high, he began to have a seizure right on the examining table. They saw a boy who had previously been diagnosed with Hepatitis, but whom had obviously never been treated. He was so jaundiced, the white parts of his eyes were yellow enough to notice from across the room.

Just before lunch, a 15-year-old girl came in with her 2-month-old baby. The baby had a 102 degree fever, was listless and clearly was severely dehydrated. The mother was also dehydrated and therefore wasn’t producing enough milk for the baby to nurse adequately. Kamille wanted to sent them both to the hospital; in the United States almost any baby under 3 months with a high fever is hospitalized and given intravenous fluids. In a child that young, a high fever can turn deadly very quickly. As you can imagine, his young mother was terrified. To make matters worse, she apparently had no family. The anguish on her face was palpable. The baby was given acetaminophen to reduce the fever, but the dehydration was still a significant concern, considering the mother’s reduced capacity to breast feed. As the acetaminophen kicked in, the baby perked up; in the mean time Carla went in search of a baby bottle so we could get some fluids in him.

Here in Guadalupe little shops inside people’s homes dot the streets. Most of the goods – things like sodas, soap, candy, snacks, etc. – are sold out of a window. At the fourth place she stopped, Carla finally found a baby bottle. We mixed some rehydration salts with water in the bottle and the baby drank nearly the whole thing. He looked like a different child in a matter of an hour or so. Crisis averted, at least the immediate one, thanks to the excellent care provided by our team. The mother and baby are to come back to day for follow-up.

Sue comforts the young mother whose child is severely dehydrated.

Today at the farm, Lance, Carty, James, Debbie are finishing up some projects at the bunkhouse and are building picnic tables for a new outdoor dining areas.

CEPAD’s farm is a teaching facility and is used for conducting agriculture experiments which will help families learn how to farm their own small plots of land using techniques for sustainability. Periodically groups of townspeople come in and learn how to grow crops to make themselves self-sufficient. Afterward, they have an obligation to go back their villages and teach five other families what they’ve learned. If families can grow their own food, they have a much better chance of improving their nutritional intake and ultimately their health. In some cases, they might be able to sell the crops they grow as an income source.

As we reach mid-week, we are still as energetic and enthusiastic as the curious children who follow us everywhere. It is heartening to see that children in all cultures play, smile, joke and laugh. Yesterday I was testing out some of my rudimentary Spanish on a group of boys, one of whom was eating an orange. I think I asked him if he was eating a spider. They all got a good laugh out of that. In the afternoon, I took video of Debbie playing with the kids, then played it back for them on the video camera’s screen. They were fascinated to see themselves and practically mobbed me, asking for mas, mas! (More, more.)

We only wish there were mas we could do to for the people in this area. The need is vast.

Lara

These girls pose with postcards from Kansas City.

PS: Note to our families – everyone is healthy so far, we are eating well, the weather is wonderful, and we all miss our spouses, children, parents, friends, and family. And a special note to Greg: Nancy says she’s going to be so excited to get home to a clean basement!