A beautiful story

I just arrived in Cali, where I have had my first oportunity to rest since the start of the mission. We have been doing marathon surgical sessions of 16 hours a day. Start our days at 6:30Am and finish at 12 midnigth or 1AM. The last thing I thought about was a blog.

We have accomplished a tremendous success. Almost 200 surgeries, 150 of them ophthalmological. about 70 pterygiectomies, 50 cataracts and 30 laser trabeculoplasties. WE also refracted and handed out 150 pairs of lions glasses, an activity that continue locally after our departure.

It has been an enormously rewarding trip. Somehow, seen each blind patient waiting for surgery made me forget the pain and total axhaustion of sitting hour after hour in the microscope.

I feel more blessed than ever that God has given me the means, the knowledge, the inclination and the physical stamina to help the beautiful people of Tumaco, Colombia.

A Worm in the Eye?!

It has been a quite a day, filled with lots of surgeries. We performed many pterygiectomies(removal of a growth on the surface of the eye caused by chronic sun exposure.) Though we were surprised with some technical difficulties, we overcame them and got through all the surgeries except for four which will be done tomorrow. Despite surgical difficulties, we have performed sixty procedures between yesterday and today.
The most interesting case occurred when we found a 2 centimeter worm in a young boy's eye! We squeezed the worm out of the eye and it wiggled as if telling us it wanted to go back into the eye.
Most importantly, however, the Colombian airforce plane finally landed with our supplies. Everyone was very excited when the army truck pulled up full of a huge box of supplies. Tonight we will unpack and set everything up in preparation for cataract surgery tomorrow.

Mission is hard work!

WE got up at 5 AM to catch the plane to tumaco. Smooth flight, gorgeous natural views. We were welcomed at the Airport by Claudia Kumaromy, a high energy, highly organized local anesthesiologist who is our main contact here.

We had meetings at the hospital to check out the facilitie. We also met at the marine base. A semisecret briefing followed. The area is the base for Plan Colombia, a FDA-supervised operation to spray coca leaves. Gunship helicopters and dust cropers are constantly bussing about. A hughe military presence. Despite the army, however, local drug-lord gangs have a turf war going on. Still Tumaco seems very peaceful. And we have our own motorcycle protection detail.

We unpacked many things and have managed to put all the supplies necessary to start pterygium surgery tomorrow at 7:00 am. We have 30 surgeries planned.

magic moment of today: we were able to piece together ( from previous supplies we brought a few months ago and supplies we brought today) all the things thast we nede to perform pterygium surgery.

Arrival in Tumaco

Drs Plotsky Boarding the Plane

Craziness of Arrival with way too many bags and not enough stuff

Final Destination

We are finally in Tumaco, swollen to a team of 14. Seven doctors, two nurses, one scrub technician, one engineer and three volunteers. Tomorrow we will be joined by a glaucoma fellow who is coming from Bogota with another microscope. The response to the announcements to the local population has been great. We have many more surgeries than anticipated and require another microscope. After much negotiating we borrowed one from Dr. Eduardo Arenas Archila form Bogota.

Today we are unpacking all our equipment and plan to start doing pterygium surgery tomorrow.

First Night in Cali

Arrived in Cali, Colombia safe and sound. There were 12 of us from United States. Here we were joined by our scrub technician arrivng from Bogota. She is an expert using the phaco system that we will be using for our cataract surgery.

Because we have so many bags, the van that took us had to stack them up on top. It was very precarious and we were very concerned because it is delicate medical equipment. Fortunately it all go here in one piece.

We depart for Tumaco at 7:30 in the am. Time to go to bed!

On the Way!

Our team has assembled with high expectations here in Regan National Airport.

The team consists of:

Doctors:

• Dr David Bianci (ENT)
  
• Dr William Chester (Anesthesia)
  
• Dr Alberto Martinez (Opthamalogy)
  
• Dr Carol Plotsky (Pediatrics)
  
• Dr Jonathan Plotsky (Internal Medicine)
  
• Dr Kamran Shayesteh (plastics)

Students

• Benjamin Plotsky (Sophomore-Gettysburg College)
  
• Deborah Plotsky (Freshman-Emory University)

We arrived in fleet formation, dragging two suitcases each. The procession made it through security, no problems. Now we are sitting at the gate, just waiting. We depart for Miami in approximately half an hour to meet up with the rest of our team before our departure to Cali, Columbia.