The first day

The brigade got an early start today in preparation for our first day of surgery. After a quick breakfast, the nurses and staff from the World Surgical Foundation and the Hospital Anibal Murillo Escobar began prepping the operating rooms as a team. Due to space restrictions, each operating room had two surgeons working in it. Dr. Domingo Alvear and Dr. Peter Rovito worked with Anesthesiologists, Dr. Veneranda Alvear and Dr. Roger Bucs. Dr. Robert Wolf worked with Diana Davidson, CRNA, and Dr. Jose Misas worked with a crew from the Hospital in Olanchito. Each OR could be found with more than 13 doctors, nurses, and medical personnel in them at a time, plus two patients! The space is quite tight, but the focus of the mission allowed everyone to push through and help so many people who would not have been able to afford to receive the care otherwise. It would be difficult to mention all of the procedures that were performed today, but we’d like to give you a small taste. Dr. Rovito repaired several hernias, removed a mass from a patient’s arm, and covered an emergency appendectomy. Dr. Domingo Alvear performed corrective surgery on two little boys to repair a hypospadius, performed a circumcision on two other little boys, and corrected several hernias on pediatric patients. Dr. Misas performed several hysterectomies, a biopsy, and even stepped in to assist on an emergency cesarean section yesterday! Dr. Wolf corrected several unilateral cleft lips and palates, released contractures from a burn, and many other plastic surgery procedures.As you can see, the team did an amazing job completing over 30 procedures on our first day! Some members of the group were at the hospital for more than 13 hours! There is truly a sense of doing whatever needs to be done in order to help the people of Olanchito, La Ceiba, and many other towns from which people have traveled to see the doctors of the WSF.

My apologies for not posting more pictures. We have so many to share, but the internet connection is quite slow. We will post them to Picasa separately and will give you the link in a future post.