This last month or so has been all over the place. After getting back from the States in August, I spent a lot of time getting ready for my first medical mission. We had the mission in Chisec and the surrounding villages—about 2 hours north of Coban. I ended up running back and forth a lot to set up radio programs, talk to local health promotors and NGOs to get the word out about the mission.

The mission itself went really well. It was the first one I was responsible for and we had a new group of doctors down, so it was totally stressful and hectic for me. However, we found a record number for patients for surgery, so the bottom line is that it was a great.

Essentially, the rural missions are one half of our total operation where we just look for the patients who might need surgery. The ones we find, we then give them a date and take them into Antigua for surgery at a later date with a different group of surgeons. The goal with these missions is just to find as many people with surgical issues as possible—hernias, cleft lips and palates, clubbed feet, tumors, prolapsed uteruses and cysts make up the most part.

The planning for the mission starts months in advance so we can promote them as much as possible. During the mission, we worked at a different site over four days. The hope is that a bunch of people are there waiting for us each morning. We start with a presentation to explain what exactly we’re doing and then start passing the patients in to see the doctors. Out of a group of 200, maybe 20-40 will be surgical candidates.

By the end of the week, I was totally exhausted. We found over a 100 patients. Despite Hurricane Felix, flooded roads and all of our Peace Corps translators having to leave mid week because of the storm, we made it through just fine. I’ll definitely change some things for the coming mission in October, but it was a good start.

This is the start of one of the missions giving a talk to all the people waiting outside. We mostly just explain that we're doing and then try to get people in line, it's like herding cats. We also do an introduction of the team. I would always give the first few minutes in Q'eqchi' just to see everyone act all surprised that the gringo speaks Q'eqchi --it's a good ice breaker

On our last day, it had rained a ton and our van couldn't make it out on the roads. We found this guy on the corner with a truck and ended riding out about 2 hours to the mission site in the back. At first I could tell the docs were a bit hesitant, but the road was really beautiful and it was pretty sweet.


On that same road are some amazing lagoons. We stopped by one on the way back that afternoon.

Kids crowding in the doors to see what the crazy gringos are doing (we were eating lunch)