My first few days

I've had my first few shifts at the cleft center and am already looking forward to what next week will bring. We are averaging 4 cases per day right now with our 2 plastic surgeons. Usually for half of the day one does surgery while the other does the follow up appointments from the previous week.

I am settling into my role and just trying to learn the ropes as of now. I will definitely be on more of a leader/nurse educator/supervisory role along with another nurse Susie. We head up the pre/post and recovery nurse staff. Susie has been here for months so she carries a huge weight of this responsibility right now but hopefully soon I will be able to really share the load with her.

We are not yet operating out of our center but we are projecting our first patient to operated on Monday there. Because of this, we prep patients for surgery, recover them and have he post op beds all in one space. It gets chaotic but I think a lot of that chaos will be settled once the center is open and we can have the recovery room on it's own as it should be.

Smushy pre/post/recovery area

Such a cutie

I've gotten to interact this week with a little 8 year old who is a World Care patient. He was born with a severe facial cleft and has had multiple operations in attempt to reconstruct his face (in the video below he has already had some repairs). He was actually flown to Virginia to be operated on by the head of Operation Smile and has since come back to India where we are further treating him. He is fighting a pretty bad infection and it looks like he may be rejecting the graft that made up his nose. He had a surgery to remove some infected parts and wash out the area two days ago. Here is a little video about him:

I don't think I can effectively convey how much this boy settles into your heart and shows us as the team why we do these surgeries. Just as it is described in the video, Nur has blossomed into such an amazing kid. He jokes around, plays, shares his food (today I was charting when a chocolate bar landed on top of my chart, he wanted me to have it). I have been praying hard for Nur and the team asking that we do the best by him and his family. I just hope that he doesn't get broken down by all of the surgeries and painful procedures. It must be so confusing to him, we are his friends but we hurt him and make him take medicine and clean his wounds. Luckily, he is forgiving and even though at midnight he was spitting his medicine at me he ended the morning playing games and drawing pictures with me. He he is so amazing.

(all photos taken by Nur)

Side note: He always draws the most detailed noses, it's so sad :( AND that's a picture of me... with a baby in my belly... not so accurate but hey! 

This week will be long but I can't wait to see what it brings!