Saturday

With everyone, including myself finally caught up with sleep (I went to bed at 8:15pm! A record!) the team hit the day with a whopping 8 surgeries.

-

Maria Elena is a 23 year old girl who marked a critical benchmark for all the previous missions of this team’s long record. She went in for a hip replacement, a delicate surgery under normal circumstances, where infection can easily kill, and surgeons often wear environment suits to perform it. But here in Coya, the doctors had to operate with what minimal supplies they had–and forego the desired sterilization process, which unfortunately meant me NOT being in the OR. I set up a remote camera that I could control with Pocket Wizards, but had problems with interference on the frequency. I finally had to rely on a wired remote cord that would shoot video clips at regular intervals. I got the footage, but a camera bump, and lousy life battery on the 7D killed the camera before the orthotic was placed.

–Kiara is a 4 year-old girl born with a club foot. She had had a previous surgery to normalize it somewhat, but today’s surgery would give her pretty much a correct looking foot, and most importantly, one that she can use normally. It’s amazing to me watching the surgery. The first cuts you can distinctly see the intricate contents of the foot, and make sense of the architecture of bone, vein muscle, etc. But after 30 minutes, to me, after rearranging, flushing the tissue, it becomes indiscernible, and the true talent of a surgeon is realized as toneless matter can only be deciphered by them.

–Roger is a sweet, happy nine month-old born with 12 toes and fingers, and got surgery to remove the extra four. In just a matter of hours, he is happy and and bubbly, like nothing ever happened. Babies are absolutely amazing.

I miss my Stella.