Sunday, March 28, 2010

77 Surgeries Completed!

The team left to for the States early Saturday morning after a long, busy, but absolutely incredible week! All surgeries were free of charge and by the end, 77 surgeries had been completed. New outer ears were molded and made from rib cartlige, tumors removed, noses reconstructed to make breathing easier, tonsils were removed, non functioning inner ear bones were replaced with a prosethis, damaged eardrums were replaced with new reconstructed functioning eardrums, etc. Overall, hearing, breathing, and living were miracously made better by the incredible team we had this week at Mission of Hope. The team worked long hours but never once did we hear them complain! We were so blessed to get to know them and share in this ministry. I know God used this week to expand His Kingdom and receive glory! Praise Jesus!



This is some of the kitchen staff for the week. They provided 3 meals/day for the inpatients. Some of the staff were actually acountants, nurses, doctors, etc normally for Mission of Hope but they just wanted to help in anyway possible to serve the patients this week.


This is not the same girl as the picture below in the OR but this little girl had the same procedure done. You can barely make out her new left ear. She was pretty happy about the results!


This is a newly contructed outer ear. The patient was not born with an outer ear so it's a 2-3 step process to contruct a functioning ear. Last year, they took rib cartilige from the patient and made an ear and pasted it to her head right under the skin to enable blood circulation to begin. This year, they put another layer of skin on the ear and lifted the outer part out from under the skin. Next year, they will construct the hole and fix any inner ear problems so the new ear can totally function as a normal ear-pretty incredible huh?


This is our friend Phil, and ENT resident at UVa, that I had no clue would be down here. We had a great time with him this week and it was so fun to have a surprise Cville feel to the week!

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