Today started cool and cloudy, with smog. Now we have sun and smog. Three operating rooms, and 17 surgeries on the docket, make for another long day. Our ward has 38 beds total for pre O.P. and post O.P. Today we hit max occupancy with 38 children which plus all the family members so we are adding several cots. It will be a full house tonight.
I sat in while Marlene our team speech pathologist interviewed a 19 year old young man. He has soft palate issues that currently let most the air in his speech escape through his nose. The result is a soft nasal voice without definition between syllables. He works and lives at home with his parents. In China there are more boys than girls, so the girls can be choosy. I spoke with his parents after they ducked into our break room to dodge the media. They wanted to show their thanks by presenting us with a banner which thanked Rotaplast for helping their son. Since their son is a young adult they do not want him to be used by the media for publicity purposes. How refreshing! So I will just call him 163. He is a strapping young man, and stands well over six feet tall. I told his parents that I wished for a successful surgery and that he would find a pretty girl. At last word the surgery went well and he is in the ward now.
Back to work. By the second week even the non-medical volunteers know what a Dingman clamp or a fistula is. This afternoon Dr. Granger is going to be the surgeon for a little boy named Jia Hao. He has what is called a bilateral lip, meaning it is split in two places. A single tooth projects beyond the gap in his lips. Nan explained to his mother that the next time she saw her son he would look different, and sometimes a parent will get used to the appearance of their child with the cleft. The mother smiled and said she was looking forward to seeing him without the cleft.
One can only imagine the anxiety a mother has while she waits to see her infant after surgery. I was in the recovery room when Jia Hao was wheeled into recovery, and his mother came to see her son. Little ¬¬¬¬Jia Hao had an extensive procedure to rejoin the huge gap in his lip. Mom was upset when she saw her child with all the swelling, and discoloration that accompanies this type of surgery. Mom is only 24 and this is her only child, so she may have had different expectations. Everyone tried to comfort her, but we needed to get our translator to tell her that the swelling would subside, the natural color would return.