Medical Campaigns and Frenectomies.

Whew....What a week!

This week, Peru Mission was very excited to host a team of 22 doctors, nurses, and assorted other people from Independent Presbyterian Church in Memphis, TN. The team from IPC came down for one full week to do a series of Medical campaigns in some of the more impoverished areas of Trujillo. This is the teams second year here with us, and after the success of last year's campaign, everyone was so excited to have them return. The team worked non stop 5 days straight by ministering, bringing down their own mobile pharmacy and consulting in the areas of general medicine, dentistry, nutrition, obstetrics, and even minor surgery to help out some of the severely underdeveloped parts of my wonderful city of Trujillo. Everyday the team saw well over 150 patients, and touched some communities in extraordinary ways. It's very difficult to explain the sort of poverty that is a reality here, but I stole a slide show from Allen Bradford (a missionary wife) to give you a glimpse of some of the areas we were working in- mostly in the really underdeveloped areas, including a few squatter towns that have only been established in the last few years.

Side note: I HAD more pictures of my own from the week, but one of the missionary kids asked to take a few pictures with my camera, and then I ended up with all my pictures erased,
Concept- Kids don't know how to work digital cameras.
Application- Don't ever give a kid your digital camera when you have 200 images that are important to you.

Anyway.

Click HERE to be taken the slideshow

I spent the last week translating for the doctors that came down here. I really enjoy medical translations. It's such a great privilege to meet so many more people in the Peruvian communities that I don't get to visit very often as well as to be able to spend some time with some really great doctors from the States at the same time. We were able to listen to the stories from the patients and after many exams, the doctors prayed with the patients as well. I met one lady- Rosa, a single mother who has anemia and about a million other problems that could very easily destroy a person's spirit, but Rosa continues on. She is outside of the church right now and seeking peace, seeking comfort, and seeking anyone to make her feel like she is not alone in this world. We talked for a while and I tried to share the light of the Gospel with her and give her passages so that she could see the hope she has in Christ alone. We prayed for awhile and I continue to pray for her as I ask you to do the same, for Rosa, and for everyone else that has similar stories. This week was tiring but filled with profound and abundant blessings!

OH! The Frenectomy. That probably could go under the heading of Blessing as well. I think. Ok so first of all, one thing that you should know about me is that I have always had a medically odd frenulum (you know that stringy part under your tongue?) Well. My frenulum was always attached too far up, which meant that I could literally only stick my tongue out maybe 1 or 2 centimeters farther than my lips. No problem, I thought, it was always like that, it just gave me a little random fact to make me unique. Well. Anyway, the last day of the medical campaign, I was asking the dentist for some help with my jaw (it often pops so I wanted to know some stretches I could do to maybe help with that). He told me one of the exercises to do which involved touching the tip of my tongue to the roof of my mouth and curling my tongue back, to which I replied "I can't!"

My tongue couldn't easily touch the roof of my mouth, so Dr. John (the dentist) said "What??" He looked at my tongue, and said "Gillian! You're frenulum is tethered, why didn't you tell me? I can take care of that for you right now."

Um. excuse me, what? How? Well, it turns out there is a minor corrective surgery that can be done to cut that part and free my tongue from the slavery of the frenulum. He told me he could do it that day after lunch. I was a little nervous, because I knew my entire life as I knew it would be changed. How would my life look after I could easily stick out my tongue? And now what would I tell people about myself in a conversation that involved medical oddities???

So I thought about it a little, and then the dentist told me that number one, this would allow me to do that jaw exercise that would help my jaw stop popping and the big seller was that a procedure like that would cost between $400-$500 in the states. So I went ahead and decided that having that procedure in a third world country for free beat the heck out of paying for it. So after a delicious lunch of delicious Peruvian food, I gathered my courage and Dr. John and Dr. Mel numbed me up, laughed as I struggled over saying the th sound with the medicine, and did the deed. Snip Snip. My first surgery ever. After 3 minutes, I was freed from my former handicap of an oppressive frenulum. I know can pronounce things clearly, although I was unaware that I talked funny beforehand, and good news, I can now Roll my R's faster in Spanish! So all in all, I think not paying a dime for this thing was worth the sacrifice of my conversation starter.

So there you have it. Medical Campaign and a free frenectomy. All in all, another great week in Peru!