OCTOBER 7, 2013

It's Monday and the last three days have seen 3 groups of team members arrive in Kigali. Boxes have been unpacked, telephones programed and passed out to all team members. The ICU, pharmacy and OR are arranged, equipment working, organized and set up. Yesterday, our film crew of Sandy Konyu and Dawn Worrall went to one of the patient's house to begin filming for our future documentary. Everyone is excited that the patient, Clementine allowed them to go to her home, ask probing questions and continue to film her through surgery and follow-up. All parties involved are excited about this opportunity The OR has 2 surgeries planned for today. The first one was completed by 11:30 am and had gone well. The ICU nurses were anxiously awaiting their first patient. The second surgery will be Clementine. The medical team is happy to be here and ready to put their dedication of helping others to work. Here are some of the pictures of the first few days, including one of sunset over the North Pole, taken from the airplane.

WELCOME BACK

It began and ended with a toast, of course, to us and you and our families for allowing us to leave the country, finally!

And the long flights were just that. Thankfully they had great movie selections, so if you missed the Oscar Nominees, now is your time to catch up.

And, even those of us (Jamie and Ashley) who are plagued with lost luggage, were not so this time. All of the luggage and trunks arrived safe and soundly. This morning we are ready to greet our Berg Shipment and the Customs Officials at King Faisal Hospital (KFH) and justify all of our supplies. Wish us luck!

OVER THE HILL

Brooke's 40th Birthday Celebration was fabulous thanks to all of the pre-planning by April! The venue was Heaven Restaurant, a local ex-pat hangout with delicious food, wonderful community enterprises (selling objects d'art for local women and hosting art shows for local painters and sculptures) and great service all surrounded by a beautiful nighttime skyline view of Kigali. We were served a delicious pumpkin bisque and protein of choice while Hal handed out Kudos to our team for making it to the halfway point of our surgery schedule. Then the Party began! Alison provided both a heart warming and heart wrenching video greeting from home that made Brooke get the ugly-cry-face. Heaven employees fixed that by singing Happy Birthday; we fixed it like all fiends do, we ate cake! Thanks to Brooke for turning 40 so we at least had a reason behind the Mutzig! And thanks again to Avril, you are the Queen of Excursion Planning!

TET-A-TET

Both of our TET kiddos from yesterday did fabulous, thanks to the great care by the 2 pediatric nurses we brought from Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center's Women and Children's Hospital. Yvette and Nicole tag-teamed our youngest 12 and 15 year olds, settling and caring for them with swift hands and kind hearts. I have never seen someone so exquisitely tuck in a patient so expediently as Yvette. She truly is a master of her profession. Then our adult cardiac nurses took over for night shift (Katie and Sarah S.) Fortunately, in preparation for our Mission, they had an intensive 2 hour Congenital Pediatric Care Course provided by Barb and Beth, our pediatric education specialists from SHMC. And we could not have done it all without the support of "Dr. Dan," as Rwandans say. Brutacao to us. He recently arrived from the grueling Boston Marathon finish line. The long flights cross country stoved him up a bit but he gimped into the groove like he'd never left. Thanks Peds team for taking the responsibility for our little ones!

DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS

It's always good to begin and end a journey with some consistency, for us this was the universality of beer. Heffy in the States and Primus in Africa. Especially when the country welcomes you with open arms into it.













Our first group of travelers made it here safely, including all of our personal luggage. Our trunks are having a sleep over in Customs. Sandy, Hal and Dr. Mucumbitsi plan to retrieve them on the morrow.

The rest of us will also be up and at 'em on our way to King Faisal Hospital to unload all of our beautiful shipping boxes. And it will be like Christmas going through all of our belongings we left here last year.

Good luck to the three remaining waves of travelers, we will see you all soon. And you will be just as happy as Brooke to take off your support stockings!!

TACKLING TRUNKS

Ever hear the phrase, "We will never do that again"? Yeah, we could have coined it. After all of the time-consuming work ordering and packing, then unpacking and re-packing, rearranging, weighing and re-weighing ....



It seemed like a never-ending job, we ate, drank and slept it. Labels, numbers, Flight Groups, zip tieing, counting and recounting. Finally! Handling all of these trunks is over.

Sunday, HHNW Mission Volunteers came to SHMC Women and Children's Hospital Entrance to pick up their trunks.

And today we found out that all of the supplies we shipped one month ago have all cleared Customs with flying colors!! What a relief for those of us who put so much effort into shipping and what a relief for our Medical Mission - now we can actually perform the surgeries we have been planning for so long.


After all of this good news, maybe we too can relax on the sofa.

AMATEUR VS. PROFESSIONAL SHIPPERS

What a site to behold. We were so proud of ourselves, just look at how uniform those boxes are and those beautiful, colorful numbers. We thought we were pretty hot stuff. Thanks to these Berg Company employees for moving our massive pile-o-boxes from our Mission Room to the Sacred Heart Medical Center loading dock.


Then we received the photos from Berg Company, our god-send of a shipping company ... Holy Cow Bat Man! Look at those lovely pallets, protective corner guards, that beautiful "saran wrap," and who wouldn't want to be strapped in like that. A swaddled baby never had it so good.

And it definitely paid off. We just received word that ALL of our supplies made it to Kigali, and in the same 7 pieces Berg Co. sent them in. If you recall from our Mission last year, missing supplies became quite an issue. We are still waiting to exhale, as they say. This week our supplies will be inspected by Rwanda Customs - cross your fingers, get on your knees and say a prayer, burn some candles and incense, cross your legs and say "ohmmmm", nod your head and twinkle your nose - we are prepared to do whatever it takes to get our supplies into the country! Go team go!

ANNUAL NURSES' DINNER

  

        A chance to get to know each other and to relax

Great venue, great food, great conversation and best of all, getting to know exactly who we will be working with over at King Faisal Hospital in Kigali, Rwanda. Thanks again to Brooke for organizing this wonderful party, a precursor to the great time we will have working together soon and very soon.

Click here to see more Nurses' Dinner Pictures [Courtesy of Charlotte]

BACK AT IT

Well, we have been preparing again for next year. We had our first post-February 2010 and pre-February 2011 meeting. We are all excited about the work and lives we were able to serve and cannot wait to do it all again. Our first order of business will be recruiting our team and ordering and gathering supplies.

MISINTERPRETATION (aka WEIGHT=WAIT)

As it turns out this number of boxes at King Faisal Hospital does not translate into the number of boxes that left Spokane, oops. So while we were ecstatic that our shipment cleared Kigali Customs, we did not realize only two thirds of the shipment had arrived. (The weight of the Supplies that left Spokane did not equal the weight of supplies that arrived in Kigali.) We believe one third of our shipment is still in London somewheres. We are like hound dogs on a fox hunt trying to locate them.

Katie Bland, Jane VanTassel, Jim Dixon and Jennifer Day helping to unpack the Supplies that actually arrived.

Our second, mostly surgical, team arrived tonight. Finally able to relax and have a bite to eat at the Top Tower Hotel before going to King Faisal tommorrow to assess the situation.

Wish us luck as we try and locate the rest of our supplies and deal with our ever-changing surgical schedule. We are hopeful we will still be able to commence surgery on Monday, since we are all eager to start changing young adults' lives.

WE HAVE ARRIVED!

Dr. Hal Goldbert, Sandy Goldberg and Jim Dixon relieved to finally be on the plane.

Andrea Daugherty, Katie Bland and Morgan Lonsford entertain themselves while waiting in the San Francisco Airport.

Jane Vantassel at the "Yotel, Motel, Holiday Inn..." at Heathrow's Airport in London.

The first team arrived at noon yesterday. We cleared Customs at Kigali International Airport with no problems and we were greeted by our wonderful colleagues from King Faisal Hospital, there to make sure our Customs experience went smoothly.

It was great to see all of our pallets of supplies unloaded in the CICU and ready for us to unpack tomorrow. We are all looking forward to a quick dinner and a long rest as we plan to start this organizational process.