“Each morning I wake up with pain, and each night I go to bed with pain. Today, I did not,” said one of our patients this week, through a haze of happy tears. This sentiment is reflected throughout out the 3rd floor, where our ward team is caring for our remaining 20 recovery patients. Among these patients is a young woman (C), who was our very last surgery last night. This young lady’s sister was Dr. Powell’s very first surgery in Cuenca, 10 years ago. It seems only fitting that C should be his last on his 10 year anniversary as the founder of the True North Mission Society. Her mother tearfully thanked us for helping her daughters enjoy life again- there is no shortage of beautiful moments and happy tears on the 3rd floor of the Santa Ines hospital.
In addition to discharging 3 more patients today, preparing our remaining patients for discharge soon, and packing up our materials at the hospital, we also hosted a CPR training session with the local police force. Amazingly, emergency personnel are not given basic CPR training and the concept is foreign to almost all. This week, we’ve provided this life-saving knowledge to over 100 local policemen, who were keen to add this skill to their repertoire in an effort to save more lives in their everyday work. Though many were quite obviously surprised by the incredible amount of effort required to successful perform CPR, they worked hard to master the basic motions. As we were concluding the course, several officers asked if we could provide them with training material so that they could disseminate the same training to the remainder of their personnel- a very welcome question to hear! We were thrilled, and although we didn’t have any material readily available for them, we promised to send it their way as soon as we have it prepared.
Tomorrow is our final day at the Santa Ines hospital, and we will be discharging those patients that are ready to head home. We have brought in some local physiotherapists, however, to stick around and continue providing therapy to those who still need a little recovery time at the hospital.
