Run Over By a Bus

It started out like any normal clinic day. I ride my motorcycle down the hill, search for a pen in my Consulta (clinic room), and look over the patient charts on my desk. I see several of my patients throughout the morning, and Katie comes down the hill to have lunch with me like normal. When we finish lunch and I'm walking Katie to the car, I see a commotion at the front of the hospital. People begin running towards the front of the hospital where a big school bus, painted Honduran Blue, pulls up to our front door. Several men jump out and carry a young man several feet onto a stretcher where he is unceremoniously dropped. I tell Katie I won't be home for a while.
The patient is screaming and rolls over to reveal a gaping hole in his right low back which spills out a wave of dark maroon blood onto the floor. The nurses start yelling and pushing him toward the emergency room. Once we reach the emergency room we find out he has been run over by the same bus that dropped him off; he dropped his cell phone, fell out of the bus trying to retrieve it, took an unfortunate bounce and the rear tires rolled over him. He is breathing well and talking coherently now but pale as glass of milk in Antarctica.
We quickly begin resuscitating the patient and activate our walking blood bank. One of our fine emergency doctors here, Abby Miknaitis, saw how hypotensive the patient was and combined a bed sheet and part of a crutch into a life saving pelvic binder which slowed his internal bleeding and saved his life.  We began preparations for massive transfusion of blood and we found out the patient had the fairly rare blood type of B+. Christine Bell, our lab manager, had been in on her day off and began taking units of blood from known B+ missionaries as well as calling local people to come donate; her timely efforts saved his life. Abby, Mark Merritt, and myself all were able to give whole blood to my patient immediately. Our surgeon Dr McKenney was able to whisk the patient to the operating room to control his internal bleeding and use screws to try to partially reconstruct his decimated pelvic bones. I counted seven fractures in his pelvis.
The first few days were touch and go for him but God had a plan for this young man. Everyday when I round on him, I call him by his new name Alex Milagro (Alex the miracle). Please pray for him as he has many months ahead of him until he is able to walk and has many complications which can still occur. Alex had multiple lethal injuries and I was able to watch from the front row as God orchestrated his survival.  Give God the glory and watch and see what He does with this young man's life because God had miracles lined up and waiting.

If you get run over by a bus, this is the crew you want to work on you. 

Bag of Peter's blood that was being transfused into the patient. 

- Peter

Picture Update

We thought you might like to see an update of what the girls have been up to last couple of months in pictures. We are so grateful for your hand in making it possible for us to live and work in Honduras. God is at work, moving and changing lives, including ours!

They LOVE playing in the rain … which is good because it rains A LOT!

We found stuff to make a flag cake for July 4th! Kenna had been requesting it and she was so excited!

We have sooooo many bugs at our house, of all types. These pictures of our the ants that have invaded off and off over the past month of living in this house. Yes, that big pile is all dead ants. 

They love to read! And we love seeing them all snuggled up together reading.

We found water colors in town … the girls had been begging to paint … I think they liked it :)

Pictures out the window driving into town to get groceries … it takes us about 1.5 hours to get to the grocery every week - 3 hours round trip.

It is so HOT where we are … The girls often sit out in front of our house in our "pool", aka bucket :) On this day, Koley was singing with the toucans in the nearby tree.

 The engine on our car quit working this month, so Kinzie was getting rides with Peter to school. She doesn't mind at all.

Kenna dislocated and fractured her elbow earlier this month. She was happy once she had a cast and ice cream :)

Thanks for being a part of our lives! We are grateful for you!!