All rooms are operating with a practiced precision. Today is the last day for surgery. Doctors check on and schedule patients for discharge. Little girls and little boys have recovered from their procedures and have regained their smiles. I’m going to miss these smiles.
This has been a week of transformation. Surgeries have transformed and forever-altered the lives of men who’ve depended on catheters for years, children who could hardly breathe, and women who have been unable to get pregnant. Watching surgeries for the first time in person is fascinating. I think this week has helped de-mystify the surgical process for me: surgery is a very tangible thing. Incisions are made, organs are shuffled around, and offending growths, stones, and masses are removed. Veins are clamped, cut, and repaired. Fluids are pumped, drained, and suctioned. Needles administer drugs, draw blood, and sew wounds closed. It is an amazing thing to witness a patient, first seen on triage-day in pain and full of anxiety, walking out of the Obras relieved.
The patients are not the only ones that have been transformed this week. I was a late addition to the Huebner team and came to Guatemala without really knowing what to expect. Other than having a dad who is a pharmacist, I don’t really have any medical experience to speak of. In fact, I’ve been known to put off going to the doctor’s office until I absolutely need to. (I walked around with a very painful ingrown toenail for eight months last year before going to the podiatrist who, literally, lives down the street from me. Not my proudest anecdote.) I came on this trip fully aware of my many deficiencies. I have no training to in photography, and I came here to be the trip’s photographer. I’ve also never written a blog before, and I’m the trip’s blogger. I, like patients on triage day, came on this trip with anxieties. I’ve been going through a different type of surgery this week. Guatemala has been an O.R. table on which I have been laid out. God has used the Guatemalans and this team’s amazing doctors, nurses, techs, translators, cooks, pastor, and administrators as his instruments. The suffering of the patients has cut me open, exposing a cavity within. God has pointed out and removed problematic masses that have been growing inside imperceptibly, masses that have kept me from functioning like I should. He has put me on a morphine-drip of love this week. Most of my diseases are chronic and a result of the human condition, but I find comfort in the words found in Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Our God knows our struggles intimately because he knew them personally. That’s a thought to chew on.
The best thing about this week is that it has not been about me. This week has been about sacrifice and service. It has been about unity of purpose. It has been about egos being laid down at the foot of the cross. It has been about humility in understanding our limits as finite beings. When you get out of your own way, there’s no limit to what God can achieve through you. I have learned a little bit more about medicine and Guatemala this week, but I have learned a LOT about leadership, friendship, humility, teamwork, love, sacrifice, selflessness, worship, and godliness. These things, along with some of the amazing food I had this week, are going to stick to my ribs for a long time to come.
Pray for continued healing. Pray for the people of Guatemala. Pray for how the Lord can use you to support this mission now and in the years to come. And lastly, share the good news of the gospel with your words and with your life.
-Joel Bacon 4/6/17