More words from the makeshift ambulation nerve center

The Operation Walk Mooresville team had a great day today in Guatemala. 38 surgeries total, which bested yesterday’s 29 and the prior day’s 19. Wednesday is usually a big day, though by Wednesday, a lot of people are also pretty tired. It’s early mornings and late nights on four-day repeat. (That I’m up writing this instead of getting some much-needed sleep is a pretty idiotic choice, actually.)

The physical therapy team is seeing good mobility results from the patients this year, and most seem relatively pain free. This is due in part to innovative pharmaceuticals, but also I’d expect due to the constitution of the people here. Seeing Central America in person annually has become a constant reminder that life in the United States, for its occasional shortcomings, is truly a privilege for many. People who have a hard time getting around in Guatemala are used to having it rough; some of the best-maintained sidewalks here are on par with some of the worst in the U.S. You don’t see wheelchairs anywhere to speak of, and trying to walk with crutches on this terrain seems like certain suicide.

On the subject of Guatemala itself, it does seem that the country is seeing some progress. At least on the outside, a more visible middle class is poking out. The streets are much cleaner than I remember, and there doesn’t appear to be the kind of rampant squalor in the city that alarmed my newcomer eyes in 2010. I don’t know if you’d call it a real transformation, since there is still a lot that can be done…but it seems like some degree of progress. One central aspect of this team’s mission that has kept me engaged and involved is the idea that walking people means working people. And by all evidence, Guatemaltecos are obviously working…so I’m overjoyed to help contribute to keeping them walking.

Beginning the last day of surgeries is becoming a sad affair for me personally. It’s a bookend to concluding another short, intense, spasmic flurry with one of the best teams of professionals I’ve ever worked with in my life. These people are truly the best at what they do. From my perspective as an industry outsider, the U.S. healthcare system seems peppered with controversy and corruption, full of people burned out on red tape, compliance regulations, insurance, and shifting profitability. Yet the flip side of that coin is still visible; there are people who care deeply about their craft and practice it freely for others in a truly compassionate example of what it means to help others. I’m routinely blown away by their efforts, and this week has been no exception.

I haven’t talked much yet here about what I do on this trip. In short, I’m basically a field computer nerd. Over the last few years, I’ve written a custom web application called “Healer” to aid screening and scheduling in-flow for patients, and to support data gathering on operation procedures in the hospital. Healer is oddly similar to the sorts of projects I gravitated towards in graduate school, which makes it a fun occasional diversion from my regular job. It’s far from a perfect system by my standards, and it has its warts (today being one such example, as our new network gear caused havoc with an entire day of random device disconnects). But still, Healer has been able to become, I think, a useful tool for some of the team. I’m always thinking of ways to take it a little further, but the time doesn’t always present itself. Though I think about its potential a lot.

So if you ask anyone who knows me, you’d know I have a few ambitious ideas brewing around this software. But whether those ideas ever materialize, I’ll forever be grateful to have helped play a small part on a team doing such big work.