Meeting the wonderful world of MMI

The first couple days... all of our hard work and preparation was being taken to the next stage.

In preparation for the mission, at our own homes around the US, Canada, and Peru, we had fundraisers, prayers, collection of medicines and supplies, medical reading, travel and Peru reading, gathering other needed supplies for exams, tests, etc, many emails going back and forth.

The first couple days of the mission, the Cuzco team made their arrivals and we got acquainted with one another and then we worked together to prepare for the two challenging weeks and hundreds of patients we were going to see...

This is Yelina!!! She is a dentist from Peru... Here she is helping with the major task of setting up all the supplies before the mission starts...

These are the bunkbeds we stayed in.

The room was very warm and the blankets, alpaca wool and all, kept us very cozy at night, despite the freezing temperatures at night in the mountains! We had to walk outside (VERY COLD AT NIGHT) to get to the bathroom which had limited hot water in only 3 showers for many women!
But we soon learned that our situation was a luxury compared to all of the patients situations we would be seeing in the next two weeks...

Here is Yenny, a Peruvian optometrist, and Alice, our multi-talented translator and helper
putting together patient education hand-outs we all printed out from home. Topics included:
-parasites (VERY COMMON)
-asthma
-allergies
-fever management
-arthritis and osteoporosis
-preventing and treating dehydration
We glued these handouts to the back of old used greeting cards that some of us had collected from family and friends...

Here is Danielle, an ICU nurse and travel nurse, who is preparing the supplies for triage and screening patients.
-Finding out what the patient needs!
-Vital signs
-Height
-Weight
-Checking Hemoglobins, urine dips, blood glucose etc..




Here we have Sharon, a trauma/ICU nurse and Julie, an ICU nurse and an acute care nurse practitioner student, as well as Amy, a labor and delivery nurse... Here they are preparing medications to put in packets with labels... such as tylenol, ibuprofen...

And of course our many water bottles ... it was very important to STAY HYDRATED in the high altitude of Cuzco..

Mission Day One

Day 1 of mission

Yaraccunca - a small village almost 2 hours from our base camp in San Jeronimo.

This village is only accessible by winding dirt roads up the Andes mountains. And the bus is only 2 feet away from the edges of the cliffs. Every turn you feel like the bus may flip over. Despite that, the views are breathtaking, inspirational, educational, and unseen by tourists.

It is amazing how there are plots of farm lands covering much of the steep mountainside. After seeing where our patients live and seeing the environmental surroundings of their livelihood - farming, it was easier to understand how to assess, diagnose, and treat these Quechua mountain peoples’ ailments.

When we arrived to the village we were greeting by kids running down the hill toward our bus!

As we moved the equipment up the steep hills, we immediately felt the High Altitude... we only took a few steps, and were huffing and puffing... while the Peruvian men put the luggage on top of their heads and ran up the mountain!

Most of the complaints this first day were joint pains and muscle pains from labor and work, or fractures untreated, or stomach pains or ear pain or need for glasses (it was so amazing watching the patients finally be able to see!!!!) or urinary issues which needed further workup.

It is difficult knowing they won't get followup and they will run out of meds. Cuzco is in the process of creating a permanent center for these MMI patients. This is the goal.

But despite the lack of current permanency of Health care for these patients, you can tell the look of PURE RELIEF and HAPPINESS on the patients’ faces when they can hear after their ears are cleaned or they can see after they received a pair of glasses or they can finally breathe after getting an asthma inhaler or having a wound cleaned that had been infected... It was very rewarding.. and we wished we could do more..

This was an extremely challenging day for me. For Many reasons:

1) My first experience working as a nurse practitioner EVER after graduating and getting my license ...

2) Working in a foreign country on my first mission

3) Conducting all of my patient interactions in Spanish!!!! or in Spanish with a Quechua translator

But I did it!!

This was a young mother who was complaining of coughing and being short of breath and "having a whistling sound" for 2 years... She talked about how it was difficult for her to do to most activities and she had 2 kids to take care of... i diagnosed her with asthma and worked with the pharmacy to give her the appropriate inhalers that she needed.. one example of the hundreds

of patients we were seeing..

Breathingtaking skies during the sunset on the Andean landscape made the scary windy ride home worthwhile.