Luz has been one of the Lord’s sweetish blessings to me
since I’ve been here in Peru. For those
of you who know Sylvia Park, her personality and spirit are similar to that of
Sylvia. Luz is general medicine doctor
from Lima. Their university/medical school
in Peru is 5 years. The final year is
like our intern year of residency.
Afterwards they have to serve in a rural community for a year. This is Luz’s rural year, and it’s nearly at
an end (she finishes in the end of this month). Afterwards if she wants to
specialize she can take an exam that is offered once a year in June. Whoever
gets the highest score gets first dibs at choosing a speciality/residency
spot. To practice general medicine there
is no residency program. Family Practice
doesn’t really exist here. There is a
specialty “family medicine” here, but the doctors are only trained in
preventative medicine, not in ob/peds/ inpatient, etc.
Luz has a super
sweet spirit and she’s everyone’s friend.
She reminds me a Sylvia because she’s way more into fashion then I’ll
probably ever be in a million years (I can’t even remember what I wore
yesterday), and she takes pictures of food after it’s been made (just like
Sylvia). She loves to cook too. Anytime she ever tries anything I always
know she’ll be asking how to make it before the days over. One time she had a patient’s family that was
giving her a very hard time until she was in tears even though she’d given
appropriate medical care. Even a day or
two later she was still really feeling down about the case, so Martina told me
that I should do something fun with Luz over the weekend to cheer her up. So I invited her over for pancakes (which she
loves) and Frozen (which will make anyone laugh). I made one pancake in order
to show her how and let Luz make the rest (and mine was the worse looking one
of the bunch). To Luz, of course the
making of the pancakes was the best part of the night.
You can be praying
for Luz. She’s a Christian, loves God
and desperately wants to do His will; she’s just not sure what it is. She’ll go home to Lima at the end of this
month and has to decide what she “wants to do with her life.” Of course I’m
encouraging her to come back and work at Diospi for at least another year or
two while I’ll be here J I can’t imagine Diospi without her. L
This is a type of Hemangioma called an “Angel’s Kiss”. You can tell why. We see a lot of hemangiomas here. Many much more disfiguring than this. A hemangioma is an abnormal growth of blood
vessels that people are born with.
Sometimes you can operate them, but they often times grow back. Even in the USA there’s not very good
treatment options for this. This picture
is a happy case. Just a cute birth
mark. The sad cases are the 20 year guy
who comes with one leg larger than the other and full of the abnormal blood
vessels, who cried out of disappointment and hopelessness because we had been
his last hope (unfortunately the Hospital has been marked as the Miracle
Hospital. So all too often people come
looking for miracles. Which is great
when God answers our prayers, but kills me when God’s answer is “no” or “not
now.”) Please pray that God continues to
work miracles here so that the people can see Him and yearn to know Him
personally.
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