Hola! I hope everyone is doing well. Last week at Kausay Wasi clinic we hosted a team of plastic surgeons from Portland, Oregon. It was really a wonderful experience for me and I got to be a part of some life changing surgeries. The team included seven doctors and eight support staff. They ran two operating rooms for eight hours a day for five days and did about 30 surgeries. I helped translate between the American doctors and Peruvian patients and I took pictures and video for the clinic. On multiple occasions, the patients spoke very little Spanish, so I translated the English to Spanish and a clinic nurse would translate the Spanish to Quechua. It was really awesome to communicate by way of using three different languages.
The above pictures are of nine month old Cristofer. He and his mother traveled three days to get to the clinic and he was definitely the most memorable case. Early in the week he was diagnosed with pneumonia. The doctors gave him antibiotics and hoped to operate later in the week once the inflamation subsided, but the pneumonia persisted. Although dangerous, the surgeons decided to operate and the result was fantastic. The before and after pictures of cleft lip cases are astonishing and Cristofer provides a wonderful example. This was definitely a life changing surgery!
Last weekend I went on an overnight camping trip with three Peruivan friends. We left Calca Saturday afternoon and hiked for four hours to a specatular laguna below the peaks of a mountain named Pitusiray. Luckily, we stumbled upon an unused rock house on the shores of the laguna, complete with thatched roof and adobe fireplace, where we spent the night. The next morning we hiked further up the mountain to the second laguna and hunted rabbit-like rodents called viscachas with a .22 rifle. One of my Peruvian friends was a pretty good shot and managed to kill two viscachas. We gutted them on the mountain and had a really delicious lunch when we returned to Calca. The meat is soft and similar to rabbit or guinea pig, if any of you are familiar with these varieties.
