Operation Smile and Our Medical Mission

If you are unfamiliar with Operation Smile, it is a non-profit, internationally recognized childrens charity that mobilizes a world of generous hearts and medical teams to heal children's smiles and transform lives across the globe. We offer surgery free of charge for cleft lip and palates through volunteer International Medical Missions in developing countries.

We (Mima and Olivia) will be away from the 19th through the 31st of March with a team of 70 people, made up of doctors, nurses, speech therapists, medical record keepers and more. We will be participating as student volunteers on the mission.

The primary role of a student on a medical mission is to Educate. We will be meeting hundreds of families and children everyday at the hospital or in local schools and orphanages. We will have the opportunity to give people presentations about Dental Hygiene, Oral Re-hydration, Burn Care, and Nutrition. We will also be spending time with children and families before their surgeries and after. We also have the opportunity to sit in on surgeries.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Surgery - Day 1 Woo Hooo!!!

Hey Ya'll
Thanks so much for the comments, it's very encouraging! We are drop dead tired! Today was crazy though! Sorry for all the exclamations but whoa, it is a day worth exclaiming for!!! So today was a 5:45 wake up, breakfast, and then we drove to the hospital. The drive is 10 minutes and the pump up for the day. We see a lot: children going to school in back alleys, goats eating garbage, people smoking hookahs on cement porches, crumbling buildings, and beautiful beautiful mosques. We got to the hospital and set up the child life specialist's room: streamers, balloons, and all kinds of other toys. We were mid setup when all of a sudden the nurses started bringing in the patients. There was this one little boy who was crying because he was scared and all the other kids were fussy too because they had been without food and water for hours. (surgery regulation) The Child Life Specialist's room is the last stop before surgery. The room was too small though, for translators, our sponsor and us, so we moved upstairs to work on other things. Our main area was Pre-Op, basically another waiting playroom for the kids. We colored and played lots of games. Throughout the day we were needed throughout the hospital--in the lab, screening(new patients were coming in), checked in on Post-Op, etc.
This pretty much sums up our entire day. Details later, yeah?
That being the summary, now you get to hear about the patient of the day :)
First of Yussef, cutest boy ever, our sponsor's boyfriend, and has a looooot of energy. It is hard to tell how old he is because a lot of the kids are malnourished. He is getting a cleft palate repair tomorrow. He is the most smiley kid here, he loves to hug and give kisses and be everyone's friend. He got in a fight with another little boy but all is well and they soon had fun spinning in circles afterward.

Thanks for reading!!! Please keep commenting, we were so excited to read your comments!!!

Tomorrow we are going to meet up with 5 different orphanages all together and teach them what we have prepared (our presentations). Very excited!!!!!

Love Mima and Olivia!

The End
Posted by at

6 comments:

  1. KatarinaMarch 25, 2010 at 1:45 PM

    Sounds like things are great! I'm glad you're already making friends =P

    Keep up the great work you two!

    ReplyDelete
  2. mally9March 25, 2010 at 4:07 PM

    I feel so pleased for you...tell me you kept your mouths tightly closed when you lost your freakin' minds and jumped into the Nile.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jennaMarch 25, 2010 at 4:29 PM

    AH! Mima and Olivia- this all sounds so awesome! You all are really lucky you get to go to 5 different orphanages. That is so great :) Keep up the energy and the awesome job. Love you both!

    ReplyDelete
  4. tabrownMarch 25, 2010 at 4:30 PM

    I am so happy for you two. Thank you for writing on your blog page. Gabe and I are just reading it now and we are missing you and loving you. We pray for you every night. Love, Mom and Gabe

    ReplyDelete
  5. mally9March 25, 2010 at 7:00 PM

    I really loved the little stream of descriptions...especially about goat eating cabbage

    ReplyDelete
  6. Olivia and MimaMarch 26, 2010 at 10:38 AM

    Hey Everyone! Thanks for commenting, it is so nice to hear from you, and from Mima to Mally "Mom you need to read more closely, it said goats eating garbage not cabbage, love you"

    Keep up the reading!!!!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)