Friday – Last Day of Surgery

What a difference a day makes in the wards! It is a much less hectic and crowded place. Only a hand full of patients remain, as all the patients have been released except for today’s surgeries. Families were busy preparing food, providing care to their children and there was even time and space for a jigsaw puzzle. Over the past […]

Friday

Last night we went to dinner with the Bishop. He was very nice and it was fun. Toady we woke up and gave out more going home bags. Some of the before after pictures were really great. There were a lot of big changes. It was fun to see that. We helped the doctors pack up their stuff. It was […]

Governor Perez visits the Ward

We were very fortunate today, in that, Governor Sally Perez visited the Uplift mission at the Antique Provincial Hospital. She spent time with the doctors and nurses on the wards and spoke with all the patients that were repaired yesterday. We hope that she will be instrumental in future Uplift plans and missions.

Searching for Past Patients Continued

Joylyn Sampilo had her cleft lip repaired in 2006 and she is on the surgery schedule tomorrow for a lip revision. She lives with her family in a 3 room bamboo hut near the field that her father farms. He grows mainly rice and string beans. Joylyn is a very sweet, confident and animated little girl. She is 4 years […]

Searching for Past Patients

Today was one of my favorite days. We went with Dr. Bernie, a Filipino doctor, to find the patients that had lip and cleft palate repairs during past missions. Now this is not as easy as you might think as there are no home addresses or street names so you have to be a bit resourceful. Unless you are with […]

Thursday

Last night we had dinner with the govenrnor. She was very friendly. I realized how much Philipnos love music. They sang and danced all night. This morning we went out to see some of the patiets from two years ago. It was really neat to see their houses. Both of the people we saw lived in little huts. The two […]

Cleft Palate Repair

Many of the surgeries on Wednesday were cleft palate repairs. These surgeries generally take about 2 hours. During the surgery, the surgeon will close the hole in the palate and this is done by pulling the tissue together on either side of the opening in the palate. To get access to the palate, a retractor device is used as shown […]

Speech Therapy

Most everyone knows and has seen how disfiguring an unrepaired cleft lip can be; but many people do not realize the impact an unrepaired cleft palate has on speech. It can be difficult to understand people who have not had their cleft palates repaired. Even with a repaired cleft palate, speech therapy is frequently needed to improve speech. Uplift is […]

Gift Bags Bring a Smile

Mission 2008 includes a small Youth Corp. John Moyer and Jordan of the Youth Corp and Megs are seen here with the gift bags made by Filipino American children in Colorado. These goodie bags are given to the children when they are discharged from the hospital and bring at least a small smile (as many are sore from surgery) from […]

Wednesday on the Wards

Our elite ward nurses……Captain Annie and Theresa! The wards…….what a hectic place! There are no people better equipped to handle the chaos than Lizzie, Annie (both hailing from Britian) and Theresa Sands. They remain cool and calm which is hard to do in the ward due to the humidity, the number of patients with their families waiting for surgery, the […]