Mandy Herman

12-1

Contemporary Issues

My trip to San Cristóbal, Alta Verapaz

With HELPS International

 This was my first trip with HELPS international, and my first trip to Alta Verapaz. I was so nervous I packed so many things that my backpack burst, so I took a duffle bag instead. All the translators were supposed to meet at the Marriott hotel in zone 9, and then go on the busses with the rest of the team. Unfortunately half the team was stuck in Dallas because of a snow storm or something like that. When we got on the bus, Alex, who had already met this team the previous year, found some of her old friends and introduced them to the rest of us. The bus ride was four hours; it was such a long bus ride that it gave all of us a chance to really bond. We were 5 CAG students: Daniela Moreno, Alex Rogozinski, Lilian Girón, Benjamin Chang, and me, we also had an ex-CAG student; Ana Lucia Bolaños. A lot of the doctors brought their families with them, and those whom they brought that were our age were: Laurie, Abby, Joe, Mark, Eddie, Jeff, John, Anna, Kelsey, Oscar, and Andy.

The first day, or should I say evening in the hospital was chaos. We were taken into the room where all the girls were going to sleep in and we opened the door to find 11 blue cots placed neatly around the room so we all had space to put our stuff around our cots. I got lost fifteen thousand times because I had no clue where anything was and then when we finally got word that clinics were going to open, all the translators were shoved into rooms with a couple of doctors. I was sent into a room where a doctor called Paula Oldeg was going to be with Dr. Chris Schmidt. When I walked in the room they stopped talking and I had the worst feeling in the world. I thought that these doctors were going to be boring and were going to have absolutely no sense of humor. The moment I shut the door, they started kidding around and acting like kids. Now that was a relief! The doctors had this rule that in front of the patients they were going to act stern and when the doors were closed they were free to goof around. That first evening we got 5 patients in who needed their gall bladders removed due to the fact that they had stones in there that were causing them pain on their right and sometimes kept them from working. We also got 4 hernia patients and a little boy who's testicle didn't drop correctly and needed surgery to correct that.

That night we had a meeting with our handler, Megan Albertson (now that was a woman who had seen terrible things and is actually doing something to help change the world and Guatemala). She assigned us our shifts; Ben and I were going to be in the recovery room from 6 am until 3 pm. The rest of the translators had other shifts, although I don't remember where they were assigned. I was told that the recovery room was tough, and very emotional. I took that into consideration for my first day there. When I got there at 6 am sharp (I had woken up at 5:30 to shower and have a quick coffee), there were only empty beds and one nurse there that was waiting for the translators. Her name was Deedee. She was in charge of the recovery room during most of our shift for the entire week. She told Ben and me that our job was to basically stand around near them just in case they needed us for any translating. When I was told I was to stand there doing nothing I got so mad, I had gotten the idea that we were there to help not to stand around and be useless. We finally got the first patient at 11 am that day because the OR didn't start until 10 am because it was too hard to find all their bags with their instruments, but they finally got organized and started working. The first patient we got in was gall bladder patient #1; she immediately recognized me from the day before, read my name tag and from that day on she kept calling me "Doc Mandy". I didn't have the heart to tell her that I wasn't a doctor, just a seventeen year old who translated. That little phrase, "Doc Mandy" made me want to do something and not just stand around and be a talking/translating monkey. I decided that I was going to work hard so these patients could feel better and start going home to their normal lives. I guess Ben made the same decision right about the same time I did because when one of the nurses commented that a patient needed to go to the bathroom both of us jumped at the opportunity of helping them

 What exactly did we do in the recovery room? We translated for the nurses. We carried patients to and from their beds. We took them to the bathroom and carried their IV's with them. We monitored them and took their temperatures (even if we weren't asked to). When the patients got tired of lying on their backs we helped them sit up and rubbed their backs. When the patients needed to walk or brush their teeth, Ben and I were there for them. We were able to see blood, pee, poop, vomit and several other lovely bodily fluids all over the floor and on our clothes. And yet, we always went back, even when our shifts were over we went back and checked up on the people we had been helping throughout the day. Some people were so incredibly grateful that even if they didn't speak Spanish, they learned how to say "Thank you". That's how everyone there was, grateful. A girl that had her foot burnt when she was 2 years old (24 years ago), lost mobility of her left foot. The surgeons gave her some mobility in a 1 hour 15 minute surgery. When she finally arrived at the recovery room and the anesthesia started wearing off, she started crying. Every nurse there thought she was in severe pain, but when she finally calmed down she said that she didn't feel much pain, she was crying because we had just helped her life dream to come true.

Water shortages, no flushing, bad plumbing, washing your hands every 5 minutes, having other people's fluids on you, this is all worth it. I came back from that trip with fleas, a head ache and a bag full of dirty clothes. I came back from that trip with new family members, with new friends, with beautiful memories, with a gift from a patient, with cookies from another grateful patient, and a smile on my face. I came back wanting to go back for more with this same group of people, with the same crew, same circumstances and to have more of the same feelings. I came back wanting to go to med school and continue to make a difference in my country, and to try to make a difference in the world.

I would recommend everyone to go at least once in their lives, even if they don't plan to go to med school. It's a trip in which you will have fun, and learn to be grateful for what you have. You come back feeling better about yourself, and with a hand full of new friends.