Visitors

After my month alone as the only English speaker, an American couple came with their twin 7-year-old daughters.  It's been wonderful.  The girls have boundless energy, giggle about everything.  Also tears: from the one twin Clarissa: “more people have Patricia's name than my name! (sob)”  

Veronica Escobar is the mom and a family practice physician.  She sees patients in the mornings and takes children to their new friend’s in the afternoons while I work.  Our pastor, Padre Jose, put out a short publicity notice on the local radio, and business has tripled.  Not sure if it's Padre's announcement, or people just want to see a new face, but we're all glad.   

Veronica's husband Jim is a computer programmer, has resurrected the broken website for our hospital in between child care duties.  He's as welcome, or more so, as the doctors.

An ophthalmology team arrives in 4 weeks, expects to stay a month.  Besides performing over a hundred operations, typically the general medical clinic is swamped with patients, as families who traveled 3 or more hours trying to take care of their other needs.  Right now I'm enjoying the calm before the storm.

Most patients travel long distances to see us, an hour or 2, sometimes 6.  Guadalupe is the only volunteer day hospital of its kind in Ecuador.  I often ask patients, I'm glad you came, but why did you travel so far? 

We charge an all-inclusive $5. per visit, versus 50 or more in private clinics, that's certainly part of it.  In a country where the average laborer earns $400. a month, that's still a bargain.  But were it not for Guadalupe, many patients would effectively have no health care.  The Ecuadorian government tries hard to provide universal free health care to all its citizens, but the system is overworked and underfunded, wait times are a month or more.  Especially for those on the brink of destitution (there are many), the choice is either long waits for free care or rapid care that they can't afford.  

All doctors and dentists here are volunteers.  Patients know they won't be charged for things they don't need, not always the case in the big clinics.  We can feel the trust when the patient first walks in.  And we don't compete with the local doctors, almost all of whom relocated to the large cities once their mandatory year of service is done.  It's a good collegial relationship.

Padre Jose enjoys the visitors as much as I do.  This past Sunday he drove the 5 of us to a local wilderness park, where we trekked 2 kilometers through mud down a mountainside to a series of waterfalls.  There's lots of them here in the foothills of the Andes.  I'm starting to walk normally again as my muscles slowly recover; the twins (after much needed cleanup) never slowed down.