Shout out to the Team Members

Suellen and Ellen with their patients

Every year for the past 6 years we have come to Kilgali Rwanda to do Heart Surgery on 16 choosen patients who would die without it.   We have become comfortable with our core team of so many who have worked for years to make this mission better.   I must say, there are a few who came and worked without a day off and i want to give a big thanks to these folks.   Cardiologist Pat and her echo stenographer  Marilyn provided evaluations for the selection process and were available until the last few days to do post op evaluations on our surgical patients.  Marilyn's fine work prove to be life saving for one of our patients who needed additional surgery to heal.   The extraordinary surgical team of perfusionists, Anesthesia, OR nurses and surgeons worked from morning until late night during the eight days we did  surgery.   Connie,  ICU resource nurse worked 11 straight 12 hour days...exhaustion is not the word....and Pam, our night charge nurse 8  12hr shifts out of 10 days...MGH you are lucky to have such fine nurses.

I think the two people who tirelessly worked everyday was Suellen and Ceeya.   Suellen is our step down/ ward team leader.  She has come on every trip with Team Heart.   Her role is vast as she is the one person who the patients see from beginning to end..   She was part of the selection process, pre op visit, and teaching, orienting staff and opening the Ward. She is available to the staff everyday and continues with the patients in their discharge teaching.  She helps tie up loose ends and believe me there are lots of them.   She also closes the ward and makes sure the closing goes as smooth as possible.   I admire her and her work.   She quietly loves all of the patients and they love her too.    Ceeya does so much both with the actual mission and behind the scenes that i am not sure how she does it.    The social issues of our patients are vast and she has always tried to make the transiton from hospital to living life as smooth and as promising a possible.   She deserves a assistant and my hope is that she can someday afford to have a counterpart in Rwanda to follow through on all the needs of our patients.  She is a true leader.

Ceeya so hard at work

We all worked so hard and now i am starting to feel the fatigue of working 9 12hr days...but my passion for this work has not diminished.   God willing i will return in 2014.