Been a while!

Sorry Matt-philes for not fulfilling your daily (or in this case 18-day) need for the updates of my incredibly exciting and eventful life. Okay, fix your faces to "Stunned" when I tell you what I did once the past two days: I GOT TO DRIVE!!!!
"Matt, what's the big deal? I drive everyday!" may be what some of you are thinking, but if you don't know me, you don't know that I LOVE to drive and to have experiences in cars that a normal person might not have (i.e. enjoy some spirited high speed driving, off-road driving, etc). Yesterday and today I took Ruby (our POS 1970 Ford F-100) to go to an orphanage and to get wood for some projects that some Hondurans here are working on. Okay, so you need to drive Ruby to understand just how POSish it is. It only has one brake that works (front, passenger side), and at that, if you do any more than breathe on the brake pedal you are at a risk to be thrown through the windshield! It has no turn signals. It has a horn (I think). It has steering that goes anywhere but center (you can turn the steering wheel about 20 degrees in either direction befor the car will go in another direction). No seatbelts. The shift knob comes off with a shift of the gears. There are random wires hanging from the dash. I'm sure that there are more problems, just none that I discovered in my driving of the car the past few days.
Both yesterday and today I got to take it off-road, because this being Honduras, the paved roads don't stretch all the way to where you want to go, so there were a few times where I had to be pointed to where I was going to do on this dirt road in the middle of a field and just gas it and point it in a direction to get up a hill or through some rough patches. Needless to say once I got over the brakes and all the other problems, I am a pretty smooth driver of it and thoroughly enjoy being in the driver's seat, working the clutch and gas and just having a blast.
Well, in the way of surgeries, I have been faithfully attending surgery every Monday and Tuesday at 8:00am, and will put on a future blog the totals for the surgeries that I have seen. What is nice is that with the experience that I have gotten here is that I would not have been able to get this experience in the States due to patient privacy laws and stuff, so this is a really good experience to have! I most definitely want to work in the OR and I really really want to be a surgeon, but the only problem is is that I have eczema on my hands and I am not sure if scrubbing in all the time will irritate it. If not, I have been talking with Michel about anaesthesia and find that very interesting also, so I have a nice alternative. We'll see. :)
God has been faithful with giving me a Christian sister here from New York. I have not had a Christian come down here (other than the lady who runs it and she is a bit extreme in her beliefs), and we have been able to talk about our walks and pray before meals among other things. She has been such a blessing to me. Thanks God!

Well, let me know how all you guys are doing! The last post set a record with 5 responses, so let's try and surpass that! ha ha
I love you all and I'll be back in the States in 11 days!! Have a good one!

I scrubbed in!

Today I was observing surgeries with Dr Navarro again, and after the first surgery (circumcision and removal of an undescended testicle), I asked if it would be possible for me to scrub in, and he told me it wasn't since I was not a med student. Well, we were sitting around, waiting for the OR to be cleaned up and he asked me what kind of medicine I am interested in, and I told him either surgery or anesthesia. Well, wouldn't you know, about 30 minutes later, he said that I would be able to scrub in! :)
It took a while to scrub in, and I was worried how it would feel, because in the states they use sponges with soap impregnated in them, whereas here they use actual scrub brushes with soap poured in them. I did pretty good with that, and it didn't seem to bother the eczema on my hands, so I got in the OR, gloved and gowned, and took my post next to the surgeon. The surgery was a hernia repair, and all I really did was hold retractors, cut sutures, and dry the operating field to keep it clear. However, it felt GREAT! It was so nice to actually do something rather than just stand there and try to not touch anything to de-sterilize it. It was funny, because at first I kinda stood back, and he looked and said "Come closer, you're too far away!" I had to laugh, because normally he's telling me the opposite!
Well, like I said, it was a great experience, and I am going in tomorrow again, so we'll see what happens!
I'll let you know!

Life

How are things, everybody? Life is keeping on here. I am getting more and more antsy to get home, as the time nears. A month from now I'll be getting dinner at my parent's house in Dayton, Ohio.
Things here are picking up, I guess. I'll be heading to surgery tomorrow, and hopefully there are a lot of surgeries planned so that I can get some more experienced. So far, here's the current count: 2 appendectomies, 6 tubal ligations, 1 vericrose vein removal, and 1 cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal). There were more surgeries planned last week, but they had to get bumped for one reason or another. Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will be entertaining. :)
To be honest, things seem to be deathly slow here. We have 2 med students here (one from Australia and one from San Antonio, Texas), and between them and Michel, I am pretty much out of a job. The only real way I can help is that I know the pharmacy and the drugs we have pretty well. When it was just Michel and I, I would do histories, initial physicals, and vital signs, present the patient to him, then shadow him until we needed meds, and get those. While he was giving the drug and followup info to the patient, I´d pull the next one back, and we'd start it all over again. Now, all I do is sit in the pharmacy and read until someone needs meds, get those, and sit and wait. Needless to say, the rush of being here is gone and I'm just looking forward to seeing my family again.
God's been teaching me a lot lately about patience and his love. I just hope that the second half of my trip will be as personally fulfilling as the first. We'll see.

Happy New Years! ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Okay, so New Years was cool here. Michel and I went to the pool hall around 8:30 and didn't have to wait long for an open pool table (since most of the people who were there were drinking instead of actually playing pool), and we played 10 games (6-4, I lost, but I still played some of the best pool that I've ever played! When Michel was in Canada, he actually belonged to a member's only billiards club, because he played so much, so to beat him at 4 games, that's quite an accomplishment). We quit at 11:30 and just sat and chilled until New Year's came. Holy cow, there was no mistaking when the clock struck twelve. Honestly, we were in the pool hall, which doesn't have any doors, just two door-size openings and it has a big open window in the middle of it that is just open without a window, and the firecrackers were so many and so loud that I asked Michel if it had started raining. It seriously sounded like rain on a tin roof. Just imagine that, except so loud you have to shout, and you get a feeling like what things were like last night.
It was funny, there were all types of firecrackers going off EVERYWHERE and so people who were driving would turn a corner and drive as fast as possible down these roads so that they either don't get hit by any fireworks or that if they are hit, they won't be hit by too many of them. We waited until 12:45 before walking home or else it would have been like a scene out of Blackhawk Down, he and I dodging firecrackers like the Rangers did bullets in Mogadishu.
Well, we got home safe and sound and luckily we did go home then, because about 1:15, the second wave hit and while it wasn't as loud as the first, it still was loud enough to keep you awake in bed!
Hope you all enjoyed yourself and stayed safe. Let me know how you're doing!

Surgery again!

Well today was a good one in that I got to watch two interesting surgeries. The first was a planned cholecystectomy (gall bladder removal), and the other was an emergency appendectomy. The cholecystectomy was interesting but it was really deep in the abdomen and the incision was really small, so I didn't get to see a lot. However, when he removed the gall bladder, he cut it open and took out the gall stones, and there were two big ones! They were about the size of two small marbles (hey, it's the only thing I can think of!). I'll bet she's feeling better!
The appendectomy was cool since I could see most of the things and since this is the second time that I was seeing it, I knew better what to look for and what was coming. His appendix was perforated and so to check for infection, he pulled out the entire small intestine to check for any infections or lesions on it. THAT was cool! Here was this guy, out cold on the operating table and his small intestines were just lying on top of his stomach! (well, not on top of his stomach directly, there was all the drapes and everything covering his body)
Well, next Monday and Tuesday there are 4 operations each, so I hope to be able to watch them. Monday: cholecystectomy, 2 hernias, and a circumcision. Tuesday: 2 cholecystectomies, and 2 hernias. Should be fun! :)
I'll let you guys know how it goes! :)

Ohhh....life

Hey all. How's things? Things are good here. I am doing well and am getting along alright. My Spanish is getting better. Every now and again I think about my first week or so when I got here (about 3.5 months ago!!) and about how much better I am at, well...everything. I know my way around town, my Spanish, while not fluent is a heck of a lot better than when I got here, and generally I am a lot better off now than before. However, I have noticed how even here I get in a rut with my daily walk with God and just let things slip. I brought Christian books to read, but I haven't read them yet. I'm about 1/4 way through one by Piper, but I just read it whenever I am a)in the mood, or b)don't have anything else to read. I can read other books I have in a day or two, but my Christian ones? Forget about it. Why is that?
I watched most of "Saving Private Ryan" today on my portable DVD player (thanks mom and dad for that!! :). I didn't finish it because Ramona (the med student here now) wanted to go into town before some stores closed. However, even after seeing that, I realize how much people have suffered for our country and in a cause for what they believe is right. I want to do that. I feel that God has called me to medicine, but also to the military. I just can't shake the desire to be in the military, and I've had it for, well, really as long as I can remember. I thought about enlisting a little bit after high school, but chose to go to college instead. A couple times I talked to Marine Corps officer selection officers about possibly being a Marine officer (even a Marine aviator) after college, but felt like I should wait. Now, I think that God had been having me wait for the blend of military and medicine to come together. How cool would it be to be a military physician and have a ministry at the same time? Talk about a captive audience! I don't know, I just think about it and I pray about it, and sometimes I feel like "Oh man, that'd be really hard. Why don't I just do the normal doctor route: Go to med school, sink myself into some serious debt, go to residency, finish that, make some cash, pay off my debts, and live my life?" Honestly, while it is attractive because it is easy, I think that it would actually be pretty boring. Oh well, who knows. I'm just rambling here.
Well, I'll talk to you later.

The Trip From Hell Part 6

I GOT MY BAGS!!!! Thank the Lord in Heaven above! One indication of how excited I was to see my bags is the fact that I almost hugged them when I got them! ha ha
Well, proof that this is the trip from hell (and I still count it as the trip down here, because I have not arrived at my destination with my luggage. When that happens, this trip will be over and I will commence living down here for another 2 months), I got my bags today, which is a good thing, right? Well, my ride to Danli left me while I was at the airport getting my baggage. No sweat, I've been through this before just a week ago, so off I go in a taxi for a hotel, drop my newly aquired luggage off and head off to the Burger King next to the Parque Central. Tomorrow, catch a taxi to the bus station, and take the "directo" bus to Danli. I have it down! :)
Well, thanks for following the TTFH series. It has been adventurous yet extremely aggravating for me to write this, but I hope you TTFH followers have taken at least a modicum of joy from it. Keep following The Honduran Chronicles for more fun and enjoyment! Tell your friends!

The Trip From Hell Part 5

Today, 7 days after landing in Tegucigalpa and 8 days after starting my trip in general, they have my bags here in Tegucigalpa. While that is good news, there is only one problem: I can't get them until 3! (by the way, they told me this at 12:05) Oh, and my compensation for this? A $75 Taca credit that is not redeemable for cash. Gee, thanks guys. What makes you think I'd want to fly your crappy airline again after you lost my bags for a week?? Oh well, maybe I'll travel with them again WITHOUT any checked bags!
Well, I'll let you know tonight how things went with actually obtaining said bags!

¡Hasta luego!