Thursday, October 30, 2008

Babies Galore




Some pictures around Santiago ...








My last call night was a bit stressful. We had two sick babies, one of whom was septic. The septic baby was getting so little oxygen that he looked almost white. It took about 45 minutes of attempting to put in an IV to finally get one. The Hospitalito does not have ICU level care and we wanted to send the baby to Solola (the closest hospital, about 1-2 hours away) but the family didn't want him to go. The dad was not in the picture and the family didn't have the money for the transfer and medical care at the other hospital. Meanwhile, the mom kept asking me if we would 'save the baby'. We had to get social services involved and finally the baby was transferred to Solola. The last I heard, he had arrived at the other hospital. I wonder what the answer to Mom's question turned out to be.

Then, in the middle of the night, came a pregnant woman who was having vaginal bleeding. She was approximately 35 or 36 weeks (almost term) and pretty much in labor when she arrived. There was a question of placental abruption and a question of how far along she really was. Luckily, she did not continue to bleed very much and the baby, although only 2 kg, was just fine.

This weekend we went to Antigua for Dia de los Muertos. The trip did not have an auspicious beginning with 4 people sitting in the back seat of a 4 door pickup truck, one of whom lost her lunch about 2 hours into the journey. Then the hotel we were going to stay at was completely booked. Luckily, the weekend improved considerably from there :) I called other hotels frantically and we finally found a good one. Inexpensive and clean. Plus, hot hot showers. I haven't been so excited to take a shower probably in years. Antigua is a beautiful city, more European than anything else. On Friday night the streets were filled with people (Gringos and Guatemalans) dressed up in goulish or slutty (or both) costumes.

On Saturday we travelled to a nearby town for the kite (barriletas) festival that is held each year. (First we ate breakfast and I got a cinnamon raisin bagel!!!!!) The kites were made out of intricately cut tissue paper and ranged in size from 5 to 30 feet in diameter. There were all sorts of prizes, for aesthetics, time of flight etc. It was a roudy event with lots of Guatemalan fare food and marimba music. That night we went to a delicous restaurant!! We also went to see a convent-turned-hotel where one of the volunteers is going to get married. I must admit that the place was quite magical.

On Sunday morning two of us climbed up a volcano with a guide. We left the hotel at 6AM. The hike up took about 1.5 hours -- it was gorgeous and we could see smoke coming out of other nearby volcanoes. Moreover, there was FLOWING LAVA! The side of the volcanoe was covered with black sand (from igneous rock?) and strange very sharp rock formations. It was quite windy at the top but the lava radiated quite a bit of heat. (My camera ran out of batteries before getting to Antigua or else I would have some pictures.) We took buses back to Santiago which was fine except for the very creepy guy with two gold teeth and one with a diamond on it who was really insistent. I am about to fall alseep so I'd better go. I hope you are all doing well!

1 comment:

Gary Ohama said...

Hola!
Hi Rebecca,
What a wonderful plethora of Guatamalan cultural adventures. Beautiful photos. It is comforting to be able to visualize where you are. Sounds like an hombre was close to swallowing some gold teeth.
Love ya,
Gary