Guatemala: Sinew and Sutures

It is nearly seven o’clock in the morning, and I’m waiting outside with a gathering crowd. Leaves the size of elephant ears hang down from the two-story hospital. They move in the slight breeze, light and shadow dancing behind their vein-y, iridescent surface.

Next to me sits Andrea and her petit mother, Olga. Doctor Will asked me to accompany them to the hospital this morning. Andrea’s fourteen, and was hit by a pick-up seven years ago, and suffered severe damage to her left foot. At the time, there was no orthopedic or podiatrist in town, and Olga could only afford to have her daughter’s wound cleaned and stitched. The growth plate of the fibula was broken, thus causing uneven growth with the tibia. As a result, it appears that she’s nearly walking on the outer ankle and side of her foot.

Dr. Will, an American podiatrist from Seattle, moved to San Lucas a little over a year ago. Teaming up with a medical group from Michigan that visits yearly, they’ll be performing nearly 100 surgeries in the next five days. Today Andrea is receiving her first operation, which will set her foot straight. In the future, she will have further surgeries done to the growth plate at her knee, to gradually bridge the three-inch gap between her two legs.

I’m here as a resource and a translator between the American medical group and the Guatemalan patients and nurses. From my pocket I pull out a list of medical terms. In the past couple days I’ve been studying the vocabulary for different organs, bones, body parts, types of surgeries, and medical instruments. I feel a bit under-qualified for this task and am nervous. Sighing, I stuff the paper back into my pocket; if I don’t know it by now, I don’t know it. So maybe a moment to zone out before the day begins…

I stare into the eastern sky. Strands of blonde swirl like gossamer around my face. They shimmer like sunlight on a spider’s web. As I squint into the light, my eyelashes blur the morning sun, and the scene of trees and mountains appears incandescent and timeless. The sun’s heat finds my arms and face. I feel its warmth inside my chest as I breathe. Dawn gone an hour ago, the morning chill has left and the day is bright.

No windows or doors, the wind moves through the hospital corridors. At the end of the hallway, white sheets billow in the breeze, the sun bright and shining behind them. It’s getting hot, and the sheets will at least block some of the heat from the area where the patients will be waiting. Orange flowers and ferns peek in-between the white cotton.

Amidst my daydreaming, I sense someone else with me, and turn to my left. The glossy eyes of an elderly woman stare into my own. Her wrinkled hand touches my knee, and she asks if I’m a doctor. I smile at the thought, and tell her no. She seems anxious, her eyes searching. I reach for her hand, and ask about her family and where she’s from. Her story brings me completely out of my daydreaming and back to the realities of the people around me.

Suddenly I sense the crowd stirring around me. Pablo, the hospital administrator, is calling people to gather in a circle of prayer. Twenty or more patients and their families and friends are on bended knee, all of them. I do the same.

The prayer that we bow our heads and clasp our hands to, it is a prayer so wholehearted, compassionate, and moving, that I open my eyes so they’ll stay dry. Everyone’s eyes are still closed in prayer; mine look out towards the stone road. An elderly, bow-legged man, wearing a dusty hat and appearing to be dressed in his best plaid shirt and slacks, is slowly making his journey to the hospital doors. Leaning heavily on a walking stick, he places it two feet in front of him, takes careful steps to it, and then places it two feet in front of him again. He is alone; I wonder where he’s come from.

The prayer finishes with gratitude for, and hope in the doctors, “que sus manos sean las manos de dios” (that their hands be the hands of God). Looking down at my own hands as I unclasp them, I silently pray for the same blessing.

God, may the fibers and unity of sinew not only be within my own body, but also between the conversations and relationships that I develop with these people. Please be with us and between us. And may the sutures of their wounds not only bind and heal the flesh, but also may they bind humanity’s suffering and healing.