Appendicitis Guy

I should start out by explaining "Popeye in Peru." There isn´t much of a story behind it, but it´s my nickname here. Doctor Richard started calling me Popeye and has kept it going. Today as I was working with some Peruvians I realized they were calling me Popeye and didn´t even know my real name. I have plenty of stories to try and catch up on, but I´m gonna start with a copy of an e-mail I wrote to my family within my first two weeks here. We were doing a medical clinic in Tarapoto.


A lady came into the clinic a few days ago with a back tumor. When she was with the doctor, he realized that she was going through more than just medical problems. He found out that her husband had just left her and their four kids. They also didn´t have money or food. The SM´s got together and bought her a bunch of food that will last her for a while. She was incredibly happy about it. Her parents also live in the area. Her father has been sick since about Monday and was just waiting to die. However her daughter went to them and told them that there is still hope. To talk to the American doctors. After one of the nightly meetings the mother/wife came to talk to us. We went to his house where he was lying in bed and started him on some fluids. For the next day and a half or so we gave him medicines and more fluids. He hadn´t been able to keep down anything so this was the only option. He had diarrhea, vomitting, and abdominal pain as well as a fever. Throughout this time I was able to help out by taking blood pressures and exchanging out medicine and other fluids. For a little while he got better but then his condition worsened yesterday and we went to see him. We had to go get the doctor and he decided that we needed to get him to the hospital. He had appendicitis. Unfortunately the doctor had to stay with the clinic and Jenni needed to stay beside the patient. The only other people coming to the hospital besides Jenni and the patient was Beto (the doctors brother), Jackson and myself. Jackson has an international drivers license, but I don´t. However I still had to drive because I know how to drive stick shift. So I illegally drove the patient to the hospital. To get him there we had to put the patient in the back seat lying down. There was an IV still connected and it had to be held in the air outside of the truck. The first hospital we got to couldn´t help him right away so we went into Tarapoto. There we could have paid about 400 US dollars to rent out the OR room and perform our own surgery. Originally we though we would do this so I had to drive again so Jenni could stay at the hospital. Beto and I got in the truck and started driving to go pick up the doctor back out at the clinic, but Beto had to make a couple stops along the way. Beto is a pastor in the area and he was rushing back for the night meeting in order to make some baptisms. I am still unsure of how to get around Tarapoto so Beto had to tell me the directions. It was pretty crazy because he would just loudly shout out, righta, righta, righta, righta, lefta, lefta, lefta, fronta, fronta, fronta. It was fun though. Driving here is far different from the states though. Robert and Chad, you guys would´ve been impressed with my driving. I was driving fast, passing people, and driving on the wrong side of the road. There were many times where I had to park illegally as well. One of the times I had to reverse up a hill into traffic, a little tricky with stick shift. Our last stop before getting back out to the site was to pick up somebody Beto knows. I don´t even know who he is. He rode shotgun while Beto got in the back. Beto was still shouting out his repetitive directions and telling me rapido, rapido. However the guy beside me was clearly uncomfortable with my driving. It was funny to hear him when I was driving head on into oncoming traffic to pass a slow moto. Beto just encouraged it by telling me I was the best driver ever. We finally got there and they got out. Then the doctor got in, this is when my driving experience finally ended. We went back to Tarapoto and decided that we would go back to the original hospital. We got there and had him admitted. The wife was with us at this point and was stressed out alot. She hadn´t eaten all day and she was exhausted. Jackson and I went to a street vendor and bought her a meal. Then she left to go home and sleep. However somebody needed to stay with the patient overnight at the hospital. Of course it turned out that Jackson and I were the volunteers. So we stayed at the hospital last night and got very little sleep. His appendectomy went well and he is still there recovering. His wife is with him now. Everything is fine now. This is why Jackson and I took the day off and took a long nap. It´s nice too because we were exhausted even before staying at the hospital. It´s pretty crazy to think that this man was destined to die in his bed because of appendicitis. The people there just don´t have enough money to pay hospital bills. And the way they do it is that you have to pay up front. You even pay for all the surgical equipment needed up front. In fact they needed more sutures during surgery so Jackson had to run to a pharmacy to buy some for them.


This story is probably a little choppy and doesn´t flow well. I wrote it quickly in an e-mail. It turns out that he has healed well and is doing fine. Will write more soon.