Day 5: 146: Behind Every Number
One hundred fourty-six surgeries later, our final day at the Obras came and went faster than I expected.
We spent the morning doing rounds. Patients were chipper and upbeat, having improved tremendously overnight. A patient I kept thinking of was Daniela, a six-year-old who had traveled fifteen hours with her mom just to get here. Fifteen hours. That number reframed everything. This was not a routine hospital visit for them. It was days of travel, missed work, missed school, nerves they probably could not describe, and, yet, underneath all of it, hope.
But there is another place that became just as central to understanding this week: Casa de Fe.
Casa de Fe is a home for patients and families who have come from long distances for surgery. This guest house provides a place to sleep, eat, recover, and breathe during one of the most stressful stretches of their lives. Visiting it today reminded me how a portion of this mission’s impact happens nowhere near an operating room.
I got to talk to Gabi, who works in the kitchen. She told me they prepare upwards of 90 meals a day, with real attention to nutrition, because many of the families and patients arriving are malnourished. A warm meal becomes part of the healing. For some families, staying at Casa de Fe also means access to their first hot shower in years. These are not small things. They are the kind of things that restore dignity.
Three members of our team, Marie, Sharon, and Leda, spent much of the week volunteering there. Casa de Fe does not often have extra hands, so their presence was felt. They chopped vegetables, sorted beans, and cooked items to serve for lunch and dinner. All three are tasks that sound simple until you multiply them across dozens of meals, every single day, with no end in sight. But what mattered just as much, maybe more, was the time they spent sitting with patients before and after surgery. They eased nerves, drew pictures with kids who needed a distraction, and held conversations with the guests.
Looking back on the week, it is also important to acknowledge how many people it takes to make something like this possible. Beyond the operating rooms, the work is aided by people preparing food, cleaning rooms, sorting supplies, and transporting patients, with everyone doing their part so that someone else can do theirs.
I will carry the people of Guatemala with me forever. I watched their fear turn into relief, uncertainty become trust, and doubt become hope.
Everyone who walked through those doors this week is leaving different than they arrived. And after everything we’ve seen, learned, and shared, I think the same is true for all of us too.
Jaya Sheth, Blogger & Photographer
