Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Write a Travelogue (11/06/14)
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TITLE: One Week in Honduras by a 60-year Midwestern Nurse | Previous Challenge Entry
By Mary Sue Moss
11/09/14 -
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I pull into the Hampton Inn near O’Hare Airport and park the car so a shuttle service can take us to the airport tomorrow. (Note to myself) The car key is in the inside zippered pocket.
From the hotel window I see my first full- sized billboard that I’ve heard preached about via the radio for months, “ Judgment Day Is Coming-- May 21, 2011-- Cry Mightily Unto God-- Jonah 3:8” By that date tomorrow we will be safely in Honduras to stay for one week, or as the billboard says, in Heaven for eternity.
Saturday, May 21
Awww! Christ didn’t come. Shucks! Earthly plans go forward as scheduled. The plane touches down in Miami where we meet more of the medical team. At San Pedro Sula we connect with the surgeons, anesthesiologists, and nurses from Texas that make our unit complete.
Our rickety bus whips around blind corners with wind blowing through open windows and takes us three hours to the western coast of Honduras and the mountains. We’ve left the extreme heat and humidity behind. The bus driver is an excellent navigator missing by inches the semi trucks he passes and meets. The vehicle with the loudest horn wins.
Sunday, May 22
I’m told I’ll be a part of the pharmacy team, distributing pills from more than a dozen plastic bushel-sized tubs. I’m a nurse, not a pharmacist, but I’ve seen the neatly labeled shelves at Walgreen’s. This is a make-shift room with bags and bottles of poorly labeled antibiotics, pain meds, and malaria pills, and worm medicine with unfamiliar names.
“Get to know with this room,” I am told.
"Seriously?"
I’ll be OK because Karen has done this a dozen times and she’ll be my on-sight instructor.
Monday, May 23
The silence of the night is broken by the sounds of someone being very, very sick. It is 2:00am and Karen the team leader is violently retching with an obvious bacterial infection. Karen, who warns us not to drink the water, who has never been ill on her ten earlier mission trips, won’t be quarter-backing today. I was counting on her to help with directions in the pharmacy. Lord, you’ve pulled out my prop.
It’s me, tubs of medicines, an interpreter, and the first client at the door with a script in her hand that reads Keflex 250mg. A frantic search shows that we have Keflex 500mg. First judgment call, “Do I dispense the larger dose so we can move on?”
I do.
One after another, dark hands holding wrinkled papers send me on the search for the next pill. Good judgment calls are getting hard and harder to make. It is a relief to close down at 3:30 as the heat and decisions of the day have me wilted.
Tuesday, May 24
Karen was also to help us three “green horns” prepare a devotional for the group this morning. We do get through it without her and without embarrassing ourselves too much.
Yesterday we served 125 clients. I think it’s been over 130 today.
Karen said this is her first short term mission trip with the Rice Foundation without a pharmacy tech. No wonder I feel stretched.
Wednesday, May 25
Pam helps me in the pharmacy today. I now know what to give for lice and scabies.
There are so many babies today, all sleeping in the mothers’ arms. Are they resting or deathly sick? Will the antibiotic drops I mix actually help them?
Thursday, May 26
Today is the last clinic day and I finally know where to find the de-worming pills, the Diaparene, and the blood pressure meds. We take inventory and put the tubs away for the next medical team. That’s the medicine of rural Honduras—dispensed every four weeks.
Friday, May 27
It’s a free day and I’m going with the teens that are doing the two- mile- long zip line. The guy handing out helmets and gloves and straps skips over me. He thinks I’m there to sign the papers for those under eighteen.
“You’re going?” he asks with an emphasis on the YOU,
“Yes, I am. My biggest fear in life is getting lost and that’s NOT something that happens on a zip line. Killed, maybe, but not lost.”
Saturday, May 28
Back in Chicago and I find my car key and my car. The billboard above the hotel that predicted the end of the world now says, “Need Work? Call 1-800-774-2121.”
This is a true story compacted from pages of notes taken in 2011 into less than 750 words
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That these things were actually recorded and happened make it all the more interesting.
Well done.
God bless~