Sitting in the Lima Airport awaiting an 01:30 flight to LAX...
It has been an adventure ....
I arrived with no drama a week ago Thursday. Most of the team followed in on Saturday....hence the adventure begins....they had every piece of luggage opened and had stuff confiscated...Peru customs looked at every expiration date even of stuff that it did not matter. Then the team finally made it to the flight to Cuzco....when their jet attempted to land in Cuzco there were dangerous crooks winds. And when they were almost ready to land the pilot pulled up and took off feet above the ground then circled and re tried...safely landed not with out a few heart beats theat raced.
Then we experienced a 5.1 earthquake...not over the top huge....but enough to wake us from our sleep and not a comforting feeling in Adobe brick building.
Then team members started going down with travelers disentery ...a 16 year old was puking his guts out and running a heart rate of 44? Probably vaso-vagle response...then another person got seriously sick...we thought she might need to be med-evacuated out...she dropped her O2 Sat to 49, was cyanotic...very scary. Spent 24 hours on O2 and IV finally she was well enough to make the trip to Cuzco for a blood test to rule out a pulmonary embolism. Lucky it was negative....we may never know what happened. A few more folks needed antibiotics and IV's.
Then we departed for Cuzco...stuffed 11 into a van along with 13 large trunks and 11 personal bags...quite the sight.
We arrive in Cuzco..checked in and awaited our flight to Lima...the the flight was canceled ...half the team got on a early flight the half of us had to wait 2 hours for the next flight with open seats......
Such is the way of travel in developing countries...
The good news is that we completed 28 surgeries and the patients all did well...and the Doc's probably saw 200 additional patients.
Needless to say we are all looking forward to getting home...and are grateful for working with a wonderful team. We all realize how fortunate we are to come to this magical place .
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