They say that when you live in a place that you love, that when you leave you leave a part of yourself there. I'm sure that this will be case for me someday, but for now, in a more literal sense, it is certainly true. The part of me that will remain here is my gall bladder.
In my last post, I wrote how I had a severe gall bladder attack while visiting my family in Maine. Although the doctors wanted to remove it immediately, for several reasons I chose to wait until returning to Honduras to have the surgery.
One of the reasons is that medical treatment is so inexpensive here. In 2012, while visiting here for two months, Barbe had an emergency surgery to remove an ovarian tumor. The quality of treatment and care she received from Hospital Evangelico was wonderful, and so I had absolutely no qualms about returning to Honduras to have the laparoscopic surgery done.
I ended up having the surgery done at the new Centro de Espcialidades Medicas de Siguatepeque, only two and a half blocks from our house. The main reason I chose them is that, believe it or not, they were running a promotion (sale) on gall bladder removals. If you know me at all, then you know I cannot pass up a deal, and so a week ago Tuesday, Barbe and I walked down the hill to CEMS and checked me in for surgery.
I was a little sorer than I expected after the surgery and I have an abscess near the incision in my bellybutton that antibiotics are taking care of, but other than that everything went very well. I have the little bottle of gall stones as a souvenir and they actually had Barbe go back and look at my gall bladder. I was disappointed that she did not photograph it. You should probably be thankful!
The following morning after the surgery, I walked back up the hill to the house. I do not know for sure how much the surgery would have cost in the US, but the estimates I see online show from $6,000 to $10,000 USD and probably do not include all the extras I received as listed below. Total cost for my preop checkup, sonogram, blood work, surgery, anesthesia, overnight stay, meds, biopsy and followups... $1350 USD. Would I recommend coming here for this surgery? Absolutely.
I have been taking it easy and hope that I will be 100% after this week as June promises to be very busy. We have our first intern coming to stay with us for 6 weeks on Tuesday, we have a team from our home church in Jacksonville, FL coming for a week, the language school is headed into our busiest summer ever, my work with LHAA and IHNFA is also growing, Inversiones Wolfe Honduras is slowly showing signs of success, not only as a business, but also as a ministry and is requiring more and more of my time promoting and installing water filters. I have at least three wells waiting to be drilled and of course we have all the other many things we routinely do throughout the week that require our time.
I am grateful for Barbe for holding down the fort, for being a wonderful hostess for the language school an supporting me in so many other crazy projects I do. I am also very grateful that I have Chris Villanueva as my assistant. He has made so much of what I do possible and is an almost constant companion as we travel Honduras in the "grey Isuzu office". He is an answer to prayer and now I am praying God will send me a second assistant to help manage some of the other responsibilities I am accumulating.
In my last post, I wrote how I had a severe gall bladder attack while visiting my family in Maine. Although the doctors wanted to remove it immediately, for several reasons I chose to wait until returning to Honduras to have the surgery.
One of the reasons is that medical treatment is so inexpensive here. In 2012, while visiting here for two months, Barbe had an emergency surgery to remove an ovarian tumor. The quality of treatment and care she received from Hospital Evangelico was wonderful, and so I had absolutely no qualms about returning to Honduras to have the laparoscopic surgery done.
I ended up having the surgery done at the new Centro de Espcialidades Medicas de Siguatepeque, only two and a half blocks from our house. The main reason I chose them is that, believe it or not, they were running a promotion (sale) on gall bladder removals. If you know me at all, then you know I cannot pass up a deal, and so a week ago Tuesday, Barbe and I walked down the hill to CEMS and checked me in for surgery.
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| CEMS |
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| My gall stones |
I have been taking it easy and hope that I will be 100% after this week as June promises to be very busy. We have our first intern coming to stay with us for 6 weeks on Tuesday, we have a team from our home church in Jacksonville, FL coming for a week, the language school is headed into our busiest summer ever, my work with LHAA and IHNFA is also growing, Inversiones Wolfe Honduras is slowly showing signs of success, not only as a business, but also as a ministry and is requiring more and more of my time promoting and installing water filters. I have at least three wells waiting to be drilled and of course we have all the other many things we routinely do throughout the week that require our time.
I am grateful for Barbe for holding down the fort, for being a wonderful hostess for the language school an supporting me in so many other crazy projects I do. I am also very grateful that I have Chris Villanueva as my assistant. He has made so much of what I do possible and is an almost constant companion as we travel Honduras in the "grey Isuzu office". He is an answer to prayer and now I am praying God will send me a second assistant to help manage some of the other responsibilities I am accumulating.
Thank you for all you do Mike, Your to do list here is really way to short, but that is probably a different post. Thank you for the way you live your life and the example you set.
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt. It was a real pleasure to have you and your family here with us. I'm sure we will be seeing you guys often!
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