After reading my last few entries, my father suggested I give you an update on the woman who had trouble during our outreach last Friday. She was stable within the first 24 hours of the incident and upon her daughter's arrival several hours later is doing fine. She was transfered to the Guatemalan hospital in Tejutla and was still doing well upon our leave on Sunday morning.
Things like this, however, cause a person to realize the fragility of one's life. Aside from the Carpe Diem cliche, don't forget to tell those who give you energy and reason their vitality to you. Irreplaceable experience and skies, though often brevities, are integral to our moments.
2 comments:
I've known the Benevolent Improvisor for a few years now. I'm a colleague of her father's (from Michigan) who worked on a few of these Guatemalan medical teams together. To say she comes from a good family of kind people would not say it well enough. B.I.--I've watched you grow up over the years and you've grown into a person with incredible insights and appreciation for the things around you.
When I returned to the U.S. after my first medical team, I realized how the values we hold in our society are sick and twisted. We have all the answers for everyone else. What we have is never good enough and we have to have the newest, biggest, brightest and best bauble that's just come on the market. We lose sight of what's important for what's transient and trivial. As I read between the lines in your postings, I get a sense that you've had similar insights. We Americans have been blessed materially and we could do so much more with what we have. We don't because we're blind to it all around us and caught up in our form of economic insanity.
Congratulations on your new vision! You're seeing life in 32 bit color! Things like being a part of a loving family, who make sacrifices so your father can relieve the suffering of strangers thousands of miles away. You're seeing more than just flowers that don't collect dust on the side of the road and men in rags who don't have the means of caring for themselves. You see the beauty in the mountains and the heroism in those around you.
These observations are invisible to a lot of Americans. From now on, you will see people in need in places you've never seen them before. Some might consider it a curse. Those who have this vision see it as a gift and an opportunity.
Congratulations on your "new eyes". Your life will never be as it was before your trip!
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