Good Samaritan Hospital – Emily Fisher, MD
Written by Emily Fisher, MD, Fellow at the Kaiser Permanente Napa-Solano Community Medicine & Global Health Fellowship Program while on Global Health rotation with Good Samaritan Hospital in Chichicastanango, Guatemala in December 2018
“Surprising Helpers”
In December of this year, I had the privilege of joining a group from Georgia on their yearly trip to the Guatemalan town of Chichicastenango. What used to be an annual medical mission trip had been on hiatus for years since they had no physician to attend the trip. Since I was introduced to the group, we set out to spend a week setting up pop-up clinics in the rural villages outsides of the already small, but famous, town of Chichicastenango.
Having had ‘relative’ success bringing my daughter along on international trips, I brought by husband and my 2-year-old with me. There’s something about travelling with a child to give you a different perspective on things. She’s a built in ice-breaker and friend-maker, and helped my husband and I look at the culture through the lens of what it must be like for parents living in this place. At times, like when we could barely breathe in the town center due to the black poison that….