The Worth of Souls

Just so you all know, the rest of the week at Vernaza, I was not appalled or disgusted by things I saw, because it was much better. Wednesday our guy from the Junta de Beneficencio (group of benificence...it runs several hospitals, nursing homes, etc. and is funded by the lottery), Vicente, got us all into surgery. I was able to watch a full thyroidectomy with Marie and Taniel. The nurse who intubated the patient seemed very ready to let me go ahead and do that, but I admitted I didn't know how in practice. Somehow I just can't claim I "know how" to do it (like he asked...in Spanish) when I've only seen it and know the theory. I'll go ahead and do it someday, though.
Thursday I was super excited because we'd heard such great things about the burn unit. Well, Taniel and I got there to find that the whole surgical section (where you'd see more cool stuff like debridement and get to help with intubations, IVs, etc.) was closed down for that day for cleaning. The 2 surgery burn patients were being sent to the ER, but we knew 3 of our students were already there. It was still a pretty fun day, though. We saw how they run things there, talked with pretty much all the patients, gave meds and such, and learned about the treatments provided. People are bathed/showered everyday with soap and water, and then, depending on their burn, they'll either get a cream or a sulfur powder on their burn areas to fight infection and help with the healing process. I thought it was interesting to see they used a hot lamp to dry new skin grafts onto people.
I loved that we got to know Beatrice. She was severely burned as a girl and would not even show her face to people. So apparently she had surgery in the States and then was referred to the Vernaza for follow-up surgeries. She's originally from Brazil, but apparently has no family. Whether that means they were killed in a terrible fire, or she was abandoned, or what, I don't know. Our instructor, Debbie, told us a little about her, and I was intrigued to hear she lived there. Apparently after having work done several times at Vernaza, and since she has no family, she just sleeps and stays in the subacute burn unit. She will go out and work around the hospital (though I don't really think she's an employee...but one surgeon was having his son in high school help out with some surgery, too...lol) and go visit people she meets from all over Ecuador who were in the burn unit before, too. She didn't really tell us this story, but the head doctor of the unit did. She introduced herself to us and started interviewing us in English with her camera on video. We told her about our likes, asked about hers, and she and I even sang "Anything I do, I do it for you" by Brian Adams. (I know we're all sad that was on her camera, so we can be more sure it won't show up on YouTube.) She was cute. It made me sad that she never let us take a picture with her. Not so much because I need some visual evidence, but because I want her to feel loved and beautiful, confident to be in photos. I wouldn't jump to that conclusion, but she did change the subject directly or run away when we wanted pictures with her. Even with the obviously scarred and deformed face, after that interaction, she will always be a beautiful friend to me, not some lady who looks different. Hopefully she can feel that way someday and know the great worth she has as a person, as a treasured child of an Eternal Father.