Celebrations & Amputations

It has been some time since you have heard from me. The reason is simple. Life has been busy…very busy…ridiculously busy.

One of the main reasons for our busyness has been the wedding of our daughter, Krishauna. She because Mrs. Andi Brubaker this past Saturday in a beautiful ceremony at a garden here in our town. The weather cooperated, friends and family joined in, and we could not have asked for a better day to add another incredible son to our family.

I cannot share most of the photos of that special event yet, as they will be doing a second wedding in the states next Saturday, November 7th, so they want to keep those under wraps so as not to ruin the surprise for their US friends. Wanda and I will be in the States from November 4 – 9 to share in that event, so please keep the ministry here in your prayers during our absence.

We are excited about the future ahead for Andi and Krishauna. They will be in the US fundraising until next summer when they plan to join us here in Guatemala. Krishauna will be working with children who have special needs under Ministerio de Esperanza, while Andi will be serving with the sports ministry, Push the Rock, to open a Guatemalan branch of that ministry. I believe God has great things in store for them as a couple.

Once we get the Stateside wedding behind us, we can then start focusing on another wedding. Our daughter, Brittney, will be marrying Joel Caal on January 16, and we could not be happier about it. Joel is serving as the Director of our Solola headquarters in San Pablo La Laguna, the town where Brittney lives and serves. He has rented a home there, moved in and is beginning work to improve it so that after their wedding he and Brittney can share it. It will also serve as a ministry center for their work together. Please be praying for them in the months ahead.

I wish all the reasons for our busyness could be as happy as these, but they are not. We are facing so many medical hardships as the national healthcare system continues to collapse. Every day we receive calls requesting help, and many are desperate.

Sometimes these situations are extremely frustrating because they were preventable. One such call came on Monday as I was contacted by Jorge’s sister because he was in crisis. We have worked with Jorge, who has spina bifida since 2011, when we were introduced to him by Dick Rutgers. At that time he was struggling with a pressure sore on his right foot, and we assumed responsibility for making monthly visits with his family and helping to treat his foot. As Dick had done before us, we explained to his mother how to treat the sore and how important it was that they take good care of it. Pressure sores can be difficult to heal, and very few people here understand how to treat them.

One of the problems with these types of sores is that they tunnel deep into the flesh. Usually people bandage the tops of them, and the skin grows over the top. However, the wound is still there and growing under the surface. They believe the sore is healed until one day it ruptures open. In their mind, the sore came overnight, but it was there all along.

For this reason, you have to pack the wound with gauze wetted with saline solution. You then leave the gauze sticking out of the hole and place dry gauze over the top. These bandages must be changed at least once a day. This enables the wound to heal from the inside out.

In spite of these instructions, his family did not take the wound seriously. By 2013 the wound had gotten worse and he suffered from repeated infections that had eaten away his heal bone. So we arranged for a surgery team from the US to perform a Syme’s amputation in which they removed his heal bone and saved his heal pad. After this procedure he was sore free…for about two months. He then developed another because they did not follow our instructions again.

So, for the last two years, we have been treating this sore. Each time we visited I would debride the wound (cut away dead tissue around the edges), pack it and make sure the family knew how to do it. This became more difficult when his family moved from La Gomera, one of our regular ministry towns, to Nueva Concepción, which is farther out and an area in which we do not minister currently. At that point, my visits dropped from monthly to quarterly. There would be periods where we would see improvement, and I could tell they were following our instructions. Then there would be other periods during which the wound would worsen and I could tell they were not.

When I last visited the wound has worsened again. I spent time caring for it and, once again, stressed that they needed to do the same every day. I told him he needed to keep pressure off the wound, and he promised he would.

Then the call came Monday, and his sister was frantic. He was running a fever, and she said his foot was in horrible shape. She sent me a photo of the wound, and I could tell it had gangrene. And I knew it would have to be amputated. And just between you, me and God, I was angry. I was angry because I knew it could have been prevented.

The next day, Katie, Gerardo and I drove all the way down to Nueva Conception. When we entered the room I could smell the infection. We unwrapped the foot and realized that it was even worse than the picture showed. (If you are squeamish, you might want to skip the next paragraph.)

There was black, rotting flesh that ran through the wound. When I lifted his foot, I realized that the sore had tunneled all the way through his bones and out the other side. If I pushed on one side of his foot, puss would squirt out the other. His foot was eaten away with infection. I also noticed that there was angry red swelling up to mid-tibia on his leg, indicating that the infection was working its way up his leg. I knew then that they would likely take his leg at the knee.

When I confronted his mother, she said they had been treating the wound like I told them to. She insisted that two weeks before the wound was healed, but it came back suddenly. That just showed that they had not treated the wound properly, and I told her so. At this point, I had to bite my tongue and not say anything more out of fear of saying something I would regret later.

Resources are short these days, so we could not afford a private hospital. We decided to drive him from his town to Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City. It was a three hour drive, but that is the best national hospital in the country. They have competent doctors, but lack basic supplies such as antibiotics and fever relievers. We decided that the best use of resources was to take him there and offer to pay for the supplies.

I won’t take you through the long ordeal to get him hospitalized. Let’s just say it involved a nasty nurse who would not listen and Gerardo getting kicked out of the room because he was trying to explain the issues and the nurse would not hear what he had to say. But, at the end of the day, he was admitted and the doctor agreed that his leg needed to come off just above the knee.

We arrived home late, and shortly after received a call that they were doing emergency surgery to remove his leg. When the doctor went in, he discovered infection in his knee and decided that he needed to amputate at mid-femur. This has left Jorge depressed, as he thought he would only lose his foot.

This situation has taught me a lesson. From this point forward I will be carrying photos of severe and infected pressure sores on my phone. When I find someone with these sores in early stages, I will show them the photos and explain this is what happens if you don’t care properly for the wounds. Hopefully I can scare them into obedience.

Please pray for Jorge. This is a hard lesson in responsibility for him and his mother. His road to recovery will be a long one, and his life will be changing significantly.

And we ask that you also please pray for this ministry. Our expenses have increased significantly in the last six months, as has the demand for the work we do. I don’t believe we are in a financial crisis, because we can never be in such a state when God is our provider. One of my favorite quotes is by Hudson Taylor and says this:

“God’s work done in God’s way never lacks God’s supply.” 

I believe we are doing God’s work and, to the best of our abilities, are doing it God’s way. So we trust. But we do ask you to join us in praying for God’s continued provision, especially for our group home, which is the area that is needing God’s intervention most.

Thanks! Blessings from Guate!

Daryl, Wanda and the Crew