Feb. 7-First Day of Operations in Latacunga

The day started with approximately five cases in each of the 3 operating rooms. As the morning progressed there were more walk-ins and many of them were repeat patients including a woman who had Poland Syndrome and was born with only one breast. The doctors did not get a prosthetic donation for her. They were however, able to perform hand surgery and next year she will receive reconstructive surgery.  There were two cleft cases today that came all the way from Coca. Sandra is particularly interesting because her speech has so much air and her speech is so nasal, yet she is in college and hoping to recover quickly so she can get back to school.

The picture of the baby is a cleft lip and nose surgery which is usually the first phase of the cleft surgeries.  Because the doctors come once a year and the children need to be older, it will eventually be followed by palate surgery and then another nose surgery.  The nose by the end of the surgeries will have grown and the skin will have stretched. Unfortunately for the Mom, she seemed quite surprised to see a small flat nose even though the lip looked much better.

The surgeons at work was a case where the military hospital performed a cleft palate and the HAW surgeons needed to repair the work.  There is a lot of work like this that comes in during these missions and unfortunately, the poorer communities, the less likely the patients are to get surgery or it is much too late.  This case in particular required a lot of removal of scar tissue before they could repair the palate.

A repeat patient came in for microsia. The doctors had put in some hard material that resembles cartilage last year. Dr. Kathy had to scrape this material down which is as hard as wood now that the skin had stretched to form an ear.  She was able to separate this hard mass to form an ear but it will require another surgery to for the ear lobe.

These patients are blessed to have skilled doctors that come year after year performing surgeries for free. Not only are they restoring function to their patients but they do it with care because they come back!

Cleft lip surgery with new hat that was blessed by Nurse Mary Ellen's church and new clothes by Nurse Oddrun

Plastic surgeons at work ... quite efficiently

Rounds at the end of the day checking on Sandra, the student who came in from Coca