A Day Continued

From 8 am till about 7 pm, give or take, insert photos from surgery and recovery. Today I had time to go to the comedor for lunch, but the last 3 days we had it brought over. The comedor (lunchroom) is about a block away. Today it was hot dogs and mac n cheese for lunch, fajitas (delicious) for supper with milk cake.

I'd done so well giving up caffeine the last couple days, but our OR started craving diet Pepsi/ Coke, etc and miraculously 2 coolers full of Coke and Pepsi on ice showed up, so I gave in yesterday and today, so I'm back on caffeine and IT'S GREAT!!! We've done 29 cases on our 2 cleft tables M-Th. We have non-clefts tomorrow, a thyroid and an arm lesion. (Yes, I know the arm and the face are not the same.) There's a strict rule about no food in the OR. Note the black tote in the corner of the OR brought in by our lead surgeon. The patients are extremely grateful and really wonderful people of Mayan descent. Their red striped pants and matching shirts are everywhere. The women wear traditional clothes too.

Back to the day. We finished surgery around 7. We've done more palates than lips and lots of revisions of scars and alveolar fistulas (holes from the roof of the mouth or dental arch into the nose). I got to pull a rotten tooth in a 3 year old. We had a 57 yo male who had a lip revision who said he's felt ugly his whole life and wants ot look good for his wife and kids.

I'll go to bed about 9:30 and be up by 5:45 to shower and start over. When we're done, we'll start packing up. Much of this stuff gets stored in a HELPS wearhouse in G. City and waits for the next team in January. This group is very organized and I love working with other Drs of my specialty. It's great having a resident, Jenning Boyette. He makes rounds and trouble shoots. I'm afraid they won't want me back because so much of the work of this trip has been done by the team leaders and I just get to show up and do cool surgery!!!

This blog will only let me post 5 pictures at a time. There is so much I want to show. I took pictures of all the clinic and depts today. Dentistry, clinic, eyes, etc.
NN