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.