Life-Altering!!
It’s Day 3 of our mission and the first day of surgeries. Everyone met early in the morning for breakfast and devotional. We then started our walk to the Obras as everyone was filled with excitement to start their surgeries. Arriving at the Obras, the doctors and nurses quickly changed into their scrubs. They then went to their assigned rooms, pre-ops, 4 OR’s, and PACU (Post Anesthesia Care Unit). You can see the excitement each person had and above all the teamwork within this group. Taking patients from Pre-Ops to the Operation Rooms and then to PACU, was like clockwork, even though this team only met two days ago. The surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and the local Obras staff all came together and worked as a cohesive team. It was like they had been working together for a long time!
We started the first operation at 7:30 am and the last one finished at 6:30 pm, so as you can see it was a very long day, especially for one team who stayed until the last operation and then recoverey. The team did 25 successful surgeries throughout the day.
One thing you realize when you are here is that without the volunteering efforts of these doctors, nurses, and the “Faith in Practice” organization, most of these patients would never get these types of surgeries. Two particular patient stories that I would like to share. One guy had his nose worked on and I remember the PACU nurse telling us that when he woke up he just started crying. She asked him, what is wrong, are you in pain, how can I help you? He looked at her and said, I can breathe and smell again! That is why I am crying.
The second patient is the one that one team stayed with until 6:30 pm at the Obras to work on her. She was burned really early as a baby and her arm was stuck to her shoulder ever since the burn for over 16 years. If it was not for “Faith in Practice” and missions like this, she would have probably lived with her arm stuck for the rest of her life. This surgery took over 4 hours and the doctors and nurses were able to get her arm away from her shoulder, where she will now have some mobility in that arm/shoulder.
So I started the blog with the phrase life-altering and I only gave you a couple of samples but all 25 surgeries were life-altering!
