We leave the hotel about 6:45 am every morning and arrive at the hotel about 20 minutes later. Today is Saturday so traffic was much lighter and fewer people out and about. One of the reasons probably is the late night celebrations of the Bolivar Holiday celebrations last night.
Everyone hits the ground running when we enter the hospital.
People are checking the schedule to verify timing, patients, OR staffing.
OR’s have been cleaned the night before so the surgical staff can start getting ready. In this case anesthesiologist Jennifer Krupp and nurse David Sparks were prepping OR#3.
The mission team is meeting the hospital staff members who will be assisting in the surgery.
The sponsor and local Rotary volunteers are being assigned to specific duties and in many cases trained as many are being rotated into the mission.
The first patients are being prepared for surgery by volunteers. In this case Lynn Devou is having to trim a surgical gown to match the patients height. The kids are starting to figure out this is not going to be an ordinary day and getting anxious. It becomes pretty normal to hear kids crying.
At roughly 8:00 am the first patients are taken to the OR’s and the day is under way. Surgeries will continue until 7:00 pm.
The start up on Saturday was uneventful. This changed fairly quickly as a couple patients dropped out of the surgery schedule quickly for different reasons. Ultimately 11 surgeries were completed. We all gather in the hall to go out to the waiting bus as a group when surgery is complete. This usually takes a bit of time to round everyone up.
As we head out of the hospital to the bus everyone is talking about plans for Sunday our day of rest which is sorely needed.
