We've got problems

I'm tired. We did five more cases today and have promised another 10 or 12 (# is always changing) in our last two remaining days. The operating tables are too low, so my back hurts after about 10 hours of standing. The lights are never quite bright enough, so my eyes are tired as well. The patients' families are always stopping me in the halls with questions... in Spanish no less. Each day, we spend almost all the daylight hours in the hospital, missing out on any opportunity to enjoy the beautiful weather this week. There seems to be more and more work to do with fewer and fewer people to do it. We lost Wendy on Saturday, Jim on Sunday, Elizabeth on Monday, Marie on Tuesday... It's like a bad episode of Survivor. We've even been attacked by a hungry emu. You must feel really bad for me.

Meanwhile, families across the US grieve over loved ones lost or maimed in a senseless bombing in Boston. Half a million people live in forced labor camps in North Korea while their leader sells their rice to buy Plutonium. People across the Bolivian lowlands wait years to have their gallbladders removed, suffering pain after most their meals. One need not look far to put my petty little problems in perspective.

We have had a wonderful project so far. My sides are literally aching from laughing so hard with our team. It is a joy to serve alongside people who can do serious work without taking themselves too seriously. Laughing at ourselves (and the things we usually complain about) is one of the ways we have reacted to being confronted with so many people whose problems far outweigh our own. Such irony has actually helped us to ignore our own (small) discomforts and better enabled us to empathize with our patients down here. (Klatt) shared a video on YouTube (link below) that just about sums it up. I hope it lightens your mood (as it did ours).

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDKfGEw4aU


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