Chapter 1 of the Belize 2025 P4MR Surgical Mission
Getting there
From my very first trip to Belize, back in 2020, at the very beginning of what would become the pandemic, where we made jokes about where we were traveling from, or to, not knowing the full impact that Covid would have on our lives, I knew that Belize was going to change my life.
This trip isn’t cheap, It’s expensive, and it’s a challenge for me to afford, but I feel the need to go, like a Monarch butterfly, or all those birds who just up and fly south for the winter, because they have to. I don’t make this trip solely for the sunshine and warmth. I don’t make it, so I can go on about the crazy golf carts in San Pedro. I liken coming out of the San Pedro airport to walking into Times Square for the first time. All the lights, all the noise, a traffic cop, and so much traffic. Only, it’s traffic in miniature. Golf carts everywhere and they will run you down if you’re not careful. San Pedro is not why I go to Belize. I’m almost embarrassed for the country, that this place is what many people think Belize is. No, I go for a very different reason than the tourism trade. That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy a bit of downtime while we’re there, but it’s certainly not the main reason for our visit.
Having digressed and allowing my squirrels to take off on a SP tangent, I’ll herd them back in line for a minute, so I can try and properly articulate what this special country and the mission we undertake means to me. The Belize government is run as a “Parliamentary Democracy”. They have elections that can be as hotly debated as the ones in the US. Since they gained independence from Great Britain in 1981, they are a fairly young country, responsible for running themselves. The Belizean healthcare system was ranked 91/104 in a ranking published by International Citizens Insurance. I feel like this is a country that is concerned about the availability of good healthcare for its people, but they’ve been limited for reasons unknown to me. What I do know is that the people we serve are very thankful for the serviced provided by groups like Partners for Medical Relief, who I volunteer through. I found P4MR through Dr Carne, who I’ve worked with at St Charles since 2014. I jokingly said I should join him on a trip, since his being gone shut down our 2 OR’s when he would go. He quipped back that I should! So, I did some research, and headed down to Belize that first year, with Jessica, my daughter. It was a trip that changed both of us. Until one travels beyond the invisible lines of where tourists “belong” and where they do not belong, one does not truly get to see a country as it really is, without the brightly colored packaging designed for tourists to enjoy.
2025 marked my fourth trip to Belize to serve with P4MR. I had to miss 2024 because…horses. They are definitely one of the most expensive hobbies one can have, and 2024 tested our financial limits in ways that we could never have imagined. There are years that I’d go back and do over in a heartbeat. 2013, 2014, and 2017 all come to mind. 2024 can go away and never show its face again, as far as I’m concerned. I let my honey know that it would mean so much to me, to be able to return to Belize and the medical mission, if at all possible. My soul needed this trip. We made it happen. I made my travel arrangements, and finished paying the rest of the fee at the very last possible moment, in the middle of the biggest manure storm I’ve ever survived, which lasted until literal days before I departed, culminating in the loss of a dear young horse, whom I was head over heels in love with. I got on that plane with a heavy heart, knowing I was going to have to shake some of this off, in order to do my best work. I would like to think I was mostly successful.
Some of the very good that happened in the days before this trip was our CEO of the Madras and Prineville St Charles hospitals, Todd Shields, coming through with another huge donation of surgical supplies for the mission. I’ll never forget that first year, arriving in the OR’s in the Corozal Hospital, and realizing that we needed to put together our surgical supplies from the meager donations that were already there. We piecemealed things together as beast we could. I remember Dr Carne drawing his sutures tight, just to have the suture snap at critical moments, and him having to do his sutures over again, with different suture, hoping it would hold (it did). I became determined in that moment to see if we, at St Charles, could do something to make things better in those Belizean OR’s. Todd and the goddess of materials handling in Prineville, Brenda Olheiser, made it happen. The first year, we solicited the donation of some 10 suitcases from folks. Then, even when I couldn’t make the trip last year, I arranged to send most of the supplies off to Cincinnati, where P4MR is based, and the awesome volunteers, along with our fearless west coast P4MR leader, Dr Les Dixon, made sure the supplies arrived.
I’ve been asked why we haul our own supplies down, rather than just sending them in the mail, or UPS or something. I’m not really sure UPS or Fed Ex is down there. I don’t recall seeing any trucks. Postal service of these sorts of things is sadly unreliable, south of here. These are the little things we take for granted, along with quickly accessible healthcare, in the US. It’s much better for us to just bring the supplies with us and hope to get through customs with little fuss. The P4MR organizers work very hard to make this happen and have largely been very successful. This year, rather than rely on suitcase donations to transport our supplies, I called Alaska Airlines and inquired as to whether they would accept the yellow and black storage boxes, zip tied shut, as baggage, and they said yes! This made things so much easier for us! Dr Carne, Max and I spent an evening packing up our supplies into 10 such boxes and it worked out beautifully. The bonus here is that we were able to utilize the boxes in Belize to pack our leftover supplies into. We still had to use a couple of Dr Dixon’s massive green duffle bags, but it all worked out great and we encountered little resistance from the Belizean customs when we showed up down there, laden with these boxes full of donated supplies. Happiness!
Arrival in Belize
The trip down this year, was one of the best we’ve had. The Oregon Gang, consisting of Dr Les Dixon, his daughter, Chloe, Dr David Carne, his wife, Kristi, Dr Jinnell Lewis (from Madras), her daughter, Aspen, a young gal, Kaden, who we picked up in Seattle, and myself, constituted the Oregon Gang this year. I’m still shocked that I didn’t run into Dr Jinnell sooner, in the halls of the Madras hospital. A fellow horse gal, we quickly figured out that we have quite a bit in common, and hit it off quite well, quite quickly. Our paths have crossed many times, and we didn’t even know it! We’re still chuckling over that one.
The Oregon Six left Redmond early in the morning, flew to Seattle, where we picked up Miss Kaden, and then straight to Belize City, arriving in the afternoon down there. This was a vast improvement over previous years for a variety of reasons. The wonderful Chaos Coordinator, Lynda Mackey, met us at the airport, got us settled into a couple of vans, and off to Corozal we headed. This is a two hour drive north, from Belize City, to about 8.5 miles south of the Mexican border to Corozal Town, and our home away from home, Tony’s. It was well dark when we arrived, but they had arranged a dinner of fajitas for us, which we eagerly ate, and then headed to bed. My heart was feeling better already, like as soon as I got off that plane, and felt the warm air of Belize hit my face, once again. It kind of feels like coming home, if I’m going to be honest. One of those little puzzle pieces of life slips into place when I get down there. I immediately put the strife of my life at home aside, and look to what the task at hand is. We all agreed that we loved getting down there a day earlier than usual, because it gave us an opportunity to start getting our business organized before the pressure of seeing patients, and figuring out a surgical schedule. We decided we should show up early every year, from now on. Hope we can continue that new little tradition. DO NOT LOSE THESE KEYS look. I attached them securely to my backpack and that’s where they stayed. Safe and sound, all week!
At the hospital, we opened the trailer. We were like…WOW! Since ENT is usually the first surgical week, and general surgery is usually second, we just didn’t know what to expect when we opened that trailer door. Imagine our surprise to see it stacked nearly to the ceiling with suitcases full of medical supplies, for both the surgical and village teams! More surprise when we were removing suitcases, and found that a small hole had been excavated into the floor of the trailer, and some small vermin had taken up residence in the trailer at some point, and left all their nutshell casings, 6″ deep in places, for us to find. That made for a little bit of excitement, but true to our cause, we just knuckled down and figured out what to do next. Clean up the mess and move on!
After unloading the entire contents of the trailer, disinfecting them as much as possible before bringing them inside, and then stashing them all over inside our OR wing,we filled that place up! We organized what we could, and tried to prepare for the big unpacking that would take place the next day. This meant rearranging things, and utilizing space as wisely as possible. Those familiar with the OR setting will notice that we’re not wearing proper attire at this point. This is not uncommon. Once we get all of our supplies unpacked and organized, the Belizeans come in and what’s known as a “terminal clean”. After that, we have to be in proper OR attire in this area. There was more work than we expected, but it wasn’t terrible at all. It just was. There was much more work to be done, but we all dove in and worked together to get things set. You become stronger by working through some adversity.
Because of the afore mentioned strife at home, I wasn’t nearly as organized as I have been in the past. I have a notebook with all the things, Belize surgery week in it. Any surprise there, to anyone that knows me? I thought not. Well, the notebook was at home, right where I had left it last year. I had forgotten to even look at it. I keep a google doc online with the supplies on it, but even that wasn’t 100%, as I soon figured out. I’m not even going to attempt to make excuses because things worked out ok, and 2024 just was what it was. So…second order of business was to visit the “Belizean Walmart” that is the One Mall, in Corozal. Jinnell and I headed off on the “resort” bikes (you have to see these bikes to appreciate them, truly). We wandered around in that place for a half hour probably. They have an entire room dedicated to school supplies and I found the perfect notebook for my purposes. So, new notebook, more water, bubble tea, and bug juice in hand, we headed back to Tony’s and I was ready to get to work on a plan for the week, while eagerly awaiting the arrival of our fellow P4MR teammates.
Even more vans showed up at Tony’s just past 5 pm, and I got to lay eyes on my friend, Stephanie Beans, who was to be my roommate this year. We’ve worked together 3 years with the mission now and get along quite well. Our fourth for our previous OR team, Kim Cain, an RNFA, wasn’t able to make it this year, sadly. Maybe next year! Stephanie and I were quick to catch up and start working on our OR plan for 2025. I adore her. She’s a first rate OR nurse and I love working with her. Along with Stephanie, were some nearly 60 total volunteers of medical personnel and support teams. We filled up the rooms and tables at Tony’s pretty quickly! My heart was filling up, just as fast. I knew I was in the right place at the right time. Not one ounce of regret that I was there, doing what I was doing.
Up next, Chapter 2, Setting up the OR’s and arranging the surgeries for the week. Stay tuned!
What Darlene Says... 