Category Archives: Mexico

We are on the last day of surgery! So far, the theme of our work here is twofold: teamwork and flexibility. Each is necessary to do the work of helping more than 50 children this week. Fortunately, everyone here on the CSI team, as well as our partners in this mission, excel at both.

I just had a conversation with one of the wonderful volunteers here at CIMA Hospital in Hermosillo. She needed to convey some information to me that I then needed to pass along to a surgeon in the operating room. Her English is almost as bad as my Spanish, but with smiles, some hand gestures and a lot of patience we managed to understand one another. Working as a team, we were able to achieve what we needed to say and do.

Another example of teamwork and flexibility: A mother and father came to the St. Andrews Clinic in Nogales looking for help for their son. He lost his ear in an accident last year, and although he is now recovered, the taunting and bullying he suffers as a result of his appearance is terrible. Clinic volunteers brought him to see us, and CSI surgeons and a local CIMA plastic surgeon examined him this morning and made a recommendation about the best way to help this boy.

The players here are numerous: volunteers and staff from CSI, St. Andrews Clinic, CIMA Hospital and the CIMA volunteer organization. The beautiful thing about this trip is that it all the components work so well together. All of us have the same goal: helping children and families in need. No matter what language we speak – or don’t speak – or what our priorities might be at home, we all work as a team here to bring smiles back to so many faces. I’m honored to be surrounded by so many talented people, working together toward a common goal.

Saturday was our screening/evaluation day at the CIMA Hospital in Hermosillo, Mexico. We saw 104 patients, and 49 were scheduled for surgery with CSI this week. For a variety of medical and surgical reasons, the remaining children were not ready for a surgical procedure at this time. With our extra surgical day in Hermosillo this year, and energetic team members, we will be able to accommodate all of the children who were ready for surgery.

Sunday was our first surgical day for the week. We had 18 patients on the operating room schedule, a mixture of cleft lips, cleft palates, bone grafts and one rhinoplasty. This was an extremely busy day, with operating rooms busy into the evening.

Some cleft lip and palate repairs require several surgical procedures over time, with the rhinoplasty being the third or fourth procedure. Children in developing countries with clefts may never have an opportunity for even the initial repair, let alone subsequent procedures such as rhinoplasty. Because of the ongoing partnership with the St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic/CIMA and Children’s Surgery International, we are able to offer this high level of care to the children of the region who deserve as much as anyone to proudly share their beautiful smiles!

We had a very good day of surgeries yesterday. The kids kept Dr. Pablo very busy with a little bit of low blood pressure here, a little fever there, a little wheezing down the hall, but Pablo, the CSI nurses, and the wonderful CIMA Hospital nursing staff took great care them all and by sunrise you would never have known there was a problem! The families are so grateful, and even the kids seem to leave with a look that the are happy to have stopped by…or maybe they’re just happy to be hightailing it out of here before we decide to do something else!

We had a very good day of surgeries yesterday. The kids kept Dr. Pablo very busy with a little bit of low blood pressure here, a little fever there, a little wheezing down the hall, but Pablo, the CSI nurses, and the wonderful CIMA Hospital nursing staff took great care them all and by sunrise you would never have known there was a problem! The families are so grateful, and even the kids seem to leave with a look that the are happy to have stopped by…or maybe they’re just happy to be hightailing it out of here before we decide to do something else!

Today we are beginning our second day of surgeries. We did 20 surgeries yesterday and everyone is doing well this morning. Maria, Ashley, and Paul are busy upstairs completing the discharge paperwork as all but two of the kids will be able to go home today. Everyone is working hard but the delightful CIMA Hospital food service staff keep the guacamole and quesadillas coming so energy and spirits are high throughout the whole long day (hospitals everywhere should take note!). Our patients are really good little sports–even after the bad day we made them have yesterday, some of them were able to give us little smiles this morning!

Yesterday we had a really busy screening day at CIMA hospital! We screened 89 children and out of those, 46 will be getting surgery this year. Happily we did not have to turn anyone away who needed surgery because we have the extra surgery day on Tuesday. We will be doing six rhinoplasties (“nose jobs”). Often the nose is flattened and asymmetrical in children with a cleft lip or palate, and having surgery to correct this can really improve their appearance and their self-confidence. Rhinoplasties take a long time, and normally with only two days of surgery we may do only one or two so this is a great opportunity for us and the kids and their families!

Everyone on the team is doing fine, and now we are just getting started on our first day of surgeries. The CIMA hospital volunteers and the St. Andrew’s clinic volunteers are, as always, wonderful to work with and they make sure that every child and family is well taken care of!

The advance team has arrived in Hermosillo! Our trip was happily uneventful–we met up with Jon Grishkin in Phoenix and then took the puddle jumper (without the puddles) to Hermosillo. No problems with luggage or customs, and Coca and Lourdes from St. Andrew’s Clinic were waiting for us at the airport. We went to the hospital and were warmly greeted by the CIMA volunteers and staff who will be working with us this week. They’re starting to feel like family! We made plans for screening and checked out our supplies. We will be screening 86 children  to determine if they need surgery that we can do and to be sure that they are healthy enough for general anesthesia. Hopefully everyone will get a good night’s sleep tonight as we start at the hospital at bright and early and it will be a busy day! The CSI main team will arrive midday and check back for photos of the party that the CIMA volunteers put on for CSI and the children and their hopeful families! t

Our patients and team were thrilled to meet the band Hairball at the hospital.

We had a great day today–we had 96 kids we were prepared to screen, 87 showed up and got screened, and we are planning to do surgery on 38 of them, 19 tomorrow and 19 Monday.

It was  chaos at first but within the hour we had it down to a system and the rest of the day flowed as smoothly as seeing 87 patients in one day can go. Unfortunately we are not all here yet…we are waiting for Laura Glass, our second floor nurse to arrive this evening, and Mike Fritz, one of our surgeons, is still in Dallas, whence it seems the fastest way to get to Hermosillo is to fly to Mexico City and back. Or was it Berlin? We may have to pare back the schedule but will do our best to fit in as many cases as we can, safely.

And we would like to give a shout out to Hairball! When we checked in at the airport in Minneapolis , the agent asked if we were with that rock band. Um, no. But they were going to Hermosillo, too. She thought they maybe were Kiss; we found that unlikely. Someone said they were called Airborne. I sat next to them on the plane, where they listened to music, drank soft drinks, and looked out the window the whole way to Phoenix–it was crazy! They are staying at the same hotel as us, so we got to talking this morning. They are a heavy metal cover band/pyrotechnic spectacle from Minneapolis, and they are playing a gig in Hermosillo tonight. We told them about the work we are doing here and invited them to stop by the hospital if they had time, and they came this afternoon after they finished their sound check! The kids were thrilled, as were the hospital staff–many photos and smiles all around!! It was a great touch to a great day–it was really nice of them to take the time to stop by!  I never thought I would say thank you and Hairball in the same sentence, but thank you, Hairball. 🙂

We had a splendid surgical day one! We performed 4 primary cleft lip repairs, 7 palate repairs, 4 bone grafts, along with 4 lip revisions and surgeries to improve speech.

This was the full schedule as planned, even though Dr. Fritz’s arrival was delayed until almost noon. His trip took him through Cleveland, Chicago, Tulsa, Dallas and Phoenix. Needless to say, he needed to hit the ground running! Kudos to Dr. Fritz!

Today, Monday is our second day of surgery and we have 16 scheduled.  This is the first trip to Hermosillo where bone grafts are being performed by Dr. Dan Sampson of Minneapolis.  These surgeries average about 3 hours in duration.  Dr. Sampson did 4 bone grafts yesterday and 4 today.  Because of their complexity and the need of patients to remain overnight in the hospital, he will not do bone graft surgery on Tuesday, but rather assist Drs. Grischkan and Fritz as needed in OR #1.

We have terrific support in every aspect of this mission due to all the volunteers from St. Andrew’s Clinic and CIMA, which includes nurses too who are here on their days off!  They also provide us with  delicious Mexican food for lunch and breaks.

These two little guys became buddies at the hotel as they were roommates and just happened to be in pre-op together due to moving one of them up on the schedule!  They were also in surgery at the same time and in the same OR too, as well as recovery together!  They were checking each others heart prior to surgery and were having a great time playing the role of doctors while waiting.