Guayaquil, Ecuador, 2008
This website follows our incredible journey of 35 people, from surgeons, nurses, translators to eager volunteers from the United States and Canada to Guayaquil, Ecuador, where we perform three heart surgeries and at least three catheterization procedures per day for six days. We are here in Guayaquil from April 3rd to the 12th, most of which will be documented by our blog and photo pages.
We invite you to please take a look at our work and the adorable children!
Friday, April 11, 2008
Winding Down
Time flies when you’re busy and it’s hard to believe that we are going to be doing the last three kids today. Melanie, Bryan, and Maria all came through fine.
Jorge is doing well, happily playing with a toy monkey. He is playing doctor and the monkey is his patient. He put the oxygen tube all around the monkeys face and tried to attach a lead wire to it’s chest.
The ICU is really clearing out, most of our kids are able to re-cooperate so quickly and all the patients want to come to our
Thursday, April 10, 2008
In the Groove
Things are rolling along. Jorge and Javier had their operations, but Angela was too sick to operate on so we fixed Liset’s heart. She is the one whose cath procedure couldn’t be done so she is going to be fine.
The volunteers have the chance to get food to the parents. The Foundation provides us 40 lunches and our crew often eats when they have time, usually not at lunch time, so there is a lot of left over food. We make sure it doesn’t go to waste and the parents are very appreciative to
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Another Busy Day
Three more surgeries today. First up is Mell, she had a very hard day of recovery. Her lungs just would not stop bleeding and the team had to give her extra blood products. Karen came through just fine, but she is letting us know she is VERY thirsty. Mell and Karen were both repeatedly asking for water, “Aguita, aguita”. If we give them water too soon they will just throw it back up, so we need to withhold it for a while. We end up getting the Aguita chorus. It is hard not to just hand
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The halfway point
A couple of the volunteers, including myself, had a chance to go visit an orphanage this morning. We took our minivan across town to what looked like a dramatically less affluent area. On the hill opposite the orphanage lot, was an endless spread of houses that looked like shacks.
We were lead into the younger kids’ building where about 15 to 20 infants and children live quite humbly. The play room was divided in half by a counter, where on one side a couple of very small toddlers were
Monday, April 7, 2008
Catheterizations, Surgeries and Clinics
Day two of surgeries was another very busy day, but things are starting to run a little more smoothly now that everyone is getting the hang of things. We had three successful surgeries, Andrea, Alex and Patrick all came through the operating room. Local doctors here, Dr. Crespo and Dr. Colero, were helping our doctors in the operating room, Dr. Duquein the Cath Lab and Dra, Calero in the clinic
People were working so hard that we had our first victims of exhaustion. Melissa, Gary, Anne,