Local temple

As we finished a bit early Fri., some of the team went to explore the area. One place was a Buddhist temple. It is on one of the hills nod the ride up gave a nice view of the town we are working in.
This site seemed to be from the burial of important monks as there were many structures that contained remains.




There were many Buddhas around the grounds.




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Ptosis or the droopy eyelid

Another condition that seems to,occur fairly frequently here is something called congenital ptosis. The muscle that opens your eye is either absent or not working well the result is that the eye never completely opens.





This child is trying to look up.

To correct this we take some tissue from his thigh and use it to replace the muscle. If he returns for a post op checkup I'll have a post op picture.



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Keeping us humble

For the most part surgeries tend to go well and smoothly. Today, however two children "decided" to remind us that surgery always carries a risk. They were both children with defects in the roof of the mouth. The repairs went well, but at the end when all the bleeding is supposed to be stopped, it wasn't. In one case the child had not left the operating room, we just kept him asleep and found the bleeding source. In the other, the child was in recovery, so we had to put him back to sleep to take care of things.

When we returned for evening rounds everyone was doing well.


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Ears

One of my favorite operations is ear reconstruction. Last trip, in April 2013 the team was supposed to do a young man who had been turned down by many other groups. When I arrived for the second week, I discovered that the team had not left enough time to do the procedure and thus he was canceled. This time we made sure he was the first patient we saw during the screening clinc and he had the procedure done yesterday.
It is done by taking some of the rib and carving it into the shape of the cartiledge that gives the ear it's shape and then putting it under the skin where the ear normally is.




The finished framework.




In place.

Next year we will lift it away from the head to make the appearance more normal.


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Screening Clinic

As is the usual, we saw the patients selected by the local Children's Committee. This the government agency that keeps track of the children with clefts among other things. They are the ones who had this banner announcing our teams arrival.



They also arrange for them to come the first day of tithe trip, we examine them and decide the ones that are suitable for surgery. There were over 200 this time.



The auditorium filled with patients and families.

We will operate on 64 of them.


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"Personal Best"

In the spirit of the Olympics, I want to post my new personal best for longest time in the air. The flight from Newark to Honk Kong, which appeared to go oner the North Pole was 15 hours and 45 min. I didn't think planes could fly that long. So far things are going smoothly.


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