4th SURGICAL DAY - THURSDAY

New Photos Below

Thursday March 20, 2008 8:30 PM

Brian
Today at about eleven, the student team went to a local school. During the week, the children live there, while they travel home for the weekends. Jean, the head translator, told us that some of the kids who attend the school bribe their parents with rice so they will let them go. Some of the kids that attend are children that live on the dump that I went to yesterday.
You wouldn’t believe what the children have at the school. Each child has access to his or her own laptop computer. And, they have more computers for general use. The first thing we did when we got there we did our medical presentations to the kids. The picture below is of us doing the dental hygiene one.

There was one kid who lived at the dump who needed a cleft lip repaired who was screened on Monday. When Jean called the school to set up our visit, the lady who runs the school said she wanted to send a kid to us. His picture is below – it is the one with me.

The kid whose number was 207 did have surgery today. He was one of the first to go in. When he came out of the OR into the first recovery room, Sarah who developed a very close relationship with him, held him in her arms the entire half hour he was in there. The picture of the two of them is below.

I just realized that in no part of this blog have I mentioned my documentary. I have shot about five hours worth of tape and probably in the next three days use another hour at least. Not all of the tapes will be used, like the third tape was exclusively about the days off we had. I have shot roughly two hours of footage that will be cut down into 25-30 minutes. I included many shots of the OR, screening process, recovery room, post-op, and interviews with many team members. Because of sound, I have decided to use a voice over to explain some stuff. It will sound a lot better, and I can capture the raw sound of the mission.


Margaret
Today was a little less hectic for the medical records team. We were able to get caught up on our paperwork as we didn’t have too many new patients come in to be screened today. The little girl that I posted her before picture yesterday with me got operated on today. Her after picture (with me) is also below.

There was a little girl who was operated on yesterday – she is about 10 years old. She had her nose completely redone. She is the prettiest thing and her parents were so sweet. I really bonded with all of them.

We did 31 operations today including one on an older man (59 years old) who showed up today for the first time. He had a huge scar (I think from a burn) on his face. The scar tissue was pulling down on his eye so he looked just terrible. His brother told me (through our interpreters) that he has had the scar since he was a teenager. David, one of our surgeons, gave him a complete face lift and he looks amazing. He didn’t want me to take his before picture. His brother said he was so embarrassed. So, I can’t show you the difference. But trust me, it will change his life.

One more surgical day tomorrow and it is only a half day with only 10 surgeries scheduled. Then we need to pack everything up and there is a final party tomorrow night with a lot of Cambodian governmental officials. Rumor is that we are going on a dinner boat cruise down the Meekong River.

Good night.
M&B