A good news post

There is also good news. I will save the best for last.

The tiles have arrived! Phoning twice a day for a solid week clearly paid off. Squeaky wheel and all that.

Our new stove arrived! The first night I baked a casserole in it and the oven got so incredibly hot that I almost singed my eyebrows off when I reached in to remove it. I had become used to a lukewarm oven and forgot what heat feels like. So what I'm trying to say is I no longer feel like sticking my head in an oven, ha, ha.

I have a powerful new laptop! I purchased a new laptop through my employer's purchase program, so I got a bit of a deal. Now we need to get busy and load the various software we'll need for home-schooling.

And now for something quite exciting . . . I got to observe a cleft lip repair at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO)! Dr. Duncan, a well-respected pediatric plastic surgeon, graciously agreed to let me watch the two-hour surgery. There is a fabulous nurse, Sue Hunt, who is the backbone of the Cleft Palate Team at CHEO, and she got me into the OR. They gave me scrubs to put on and a mask (which I put on backwards, I felt lik a dork when one of the nurses had to fix it). The morning of the surgery I was up by 5:30am to get to the hospital very early as they start right away. Dr. Duncan even brought in one of her massive textbooks to show me the procedure she was using. It was fascinating. She narrated everything she was doing and why, so I certainly learned a great deal. I wanted to see this as I hope to volunteer with Operation Smile in either Africa or South-East Asia during our year away.

I have to say I found it tiring to stand in one spot for two hours and I was not even doing anything with my hands. I don't think I could ever be a surgeon. I also could not really differentiate what I was seeing. For example, the surgeon would point out the obicularis oris muscle that she was attaching but it looked nothing like pictures of muscle fibers in an anatomy book. The little baby was 3 months old, a very gorgeous chunky little fellow. I met his parents and you could feel how concerned they were about everything. The lip surgery went well and he will probably have his cleft palate repaired around age one year. It's hard to imagine that in many developing countries these kids grow up into adults (well, the lucky ones actually do get to grow up) with these gaping clefts unrepaired.

One amazing coincidence occurred in the Operating Room. The anesthetist actually knows my sister Lori - they went to med school together in Saskatchewan. I forget exactly how we figured this out. I think someone mentioned Sask., so I mentioned I grew up there which led the ansthetist to comment she went to med school there, to which I added "so did my sister", etc. etc. Lori, if you're reading this, Dr. Marion Gould says hi!



I also spent some time observing in the various Cleft Palate Clinics, including speech pathology of course (thank you Sussie!) as well as the dental clinic, ENT and audiology. Thanks CHEO for some great PD!

One Smile at a Time

One goal I have for myself in our year away is to take part in an Operation Smile medical mission. Operation Smile is a private, not-for-profit medical services organization that travels to developing countries to repair cleft lips, cleft palates, and other childhood facial deformities. I first heard of this organization years ago as a speech pathology student in Toronto. It always seemed like it would be an exciting and rewarding volunteer experience. Next year, if everything lines up as I'm hoping, this dream could become a reality.

Operation Smile was founded by Dr. Bill Magee, a plastic surgeon, and his wife, Kathy, a nurse and clinical social worker. In 1982, the Magees traveled to the Philippines with a group of medical volunteers to assess and surgically repair children's cleft lips and cleft palates. They encountered far more children suffering from facial deformities than were equipped to deal with on that trip. They were forced to turn many children away but rather than succomb to discouragement, they took stock of the enormity of the need and founded Operation Smile.

Cleft lip or cleft palates occur in approximately one out of every 700 live births. In the western world, corrective surgery would occur within months of that infant's life. But in developing countries, these children can live for years - sometimes even into adulthood - with unrepaired clefts. The consequences to their ability to eat and to speak are obviously very signficant. In some cultures, these kids will be hidden away by their families because of rejection by their villages due to a lack of understanding of the condition.

Since 1982, more than 120,000 children have been treated by thousands of volunteers in Central and South America, Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia and thousands of healthcare professionals have been trained globally. According to their website, Operation Smile now have a presence in 51 countries. Operation Smile builds in sustainability and capacity-building by coming alongside professionals in these developing countries and offering education and training. Mission-based education ranges from full-scale medical conferences to informal workshops on a specific skill or technique.

Each medical mission is compised of a team that includes a plastic surgeon, anesthesiologist, pediatrician, pediatric intensivist, biomedical technician, speech pathologist, child life specialist, dentist and nursing staff. Each medical volunteer has to be credentialed by Operation Smile. I began this process last year and am happy to report that I have now been approved and am offically in their database as a credentialed SLP. . . aka future volunteer. The process involved a lengthy application listing courses and training in cleft palate/craniofacial anomalies, letters of reference, copies of degrees, proof of certification and licensure, and an up-to-date CV. A couple of months later I got the good news!

And so now I keep checking back to their mission schedule, waiting to see which countries are being scheduled in our timeframe of August 2009 to August 2010. Of the countries we have in our own itinerary, there are several that overlap with previous Operation Smile missions. They include in Africa the countries of Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa (and more recently Lesotho) and in South-East Asia the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Keep your fingers crossed that a mission will be scheduled in one of these countries that matches up with our flight path.

An international mission is usually a few weeks in length. About 300-500 children receive full medical evaluations and 100-150 children are surgically treated. Each year Operation Smile organizes about 25 international missions. I don't really know if Ted and the boys would be allowed to be on-site during that time. I hope so and I'm sure, at a minimum, it could be helpful to have extra hands available particularly during the intial screening period when hundreds of families are waiting in line to be seen. Also, the Child Life Specialist typically needs volunteers to play with the children who are waiting for their surgery and so this might be another opportunity for the boys, under Ted's supervision.

I would invite you to check out their website - the videos and mission reports are especially moving. For example, view the one below. I get goosebumps - so anxious for this time to come.