Surgery on Blanco the dog

I cannot believe that my time in the mountains of North West Guatemala has come to an end. What an amazing experience!

A lot happened during the last few days in Todos Santos. I´ll leave the highlight of the trip for a post on its own.

I saw Dr Kate and Taya perform surgery on a Community Leader´s dog in the field, that´s to say, on the dirty porch with chickens and ducks running around our legs. The dog is suffering from paraphemosis (I won´t go into details here, but it´s very unpleasant for the dog). Obviously, Dr Kate was a bit worried going into this surgery as it was to be performed without the equipment you would have in an actual surgery theatre. That said, Dr Kate was pleased with how the operation went. I was lucky enough to not only observe, but to actually take part in the procedure (I only handed surgical gauze to Dr Kate, but it was still an honor to be there). When the dog, Blanco, was coming round out of the anaesthesia he was excitable, but nothing that Dr Kate couldn´t handle.

As Dr Kate did not want Blanco to lick his wound and open the sutures, she fabrictaed a cone out of a red bucket and rope! It was like watching the A-Team in action. Unfortunately, when we returned the following evening, Blanco had managed to break the cone. Luckily, he did not open the wound.

To cut a long story short, it was nothing but amazing to see such dedicated professionals as Dr Kate and Tavy perform surgery under such difficult conditions, with Tavy translating Dr Kate´s English instructions into Spanish to Mario who in turn translated Tavy´s Spanish into Mam for the Community Leader. Wow! What a day....