It was a good weekend all around.

I apologize for the possible multiple posts today. I am sick, very tired and keep inadvertently posting instead of saving to draft. Here is the real post…

The weekend was a good all around. Despite the fact that many of us have been sick. The mood was definitely lighter as it was the 3rd day of no hartals and for now the hospital as well as the city is bustling with activity.

We are falling into a routine. We get up, get ready, and eat breakfast. We then pile into 3 vans and all hold our breath on the drive to the hospital. I have never seen crazier drivers. On the road are buses, vans, cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, bikes, people and the occasional animal. The rule of the road seems to be you better get out of the way if someone bigger is coming through because they are NOT going to stop. How we haven’t hit something or been hit by something I’ll never know.

Our morning precession through the hospital wards to the operating rooms is met with smiling faces, waving hands and many photographs. The security details and staff are growing accustomed to us being here and aren’t as wary as they first were. Some are even trying out a little English as we attempt to learn words in Bangala. I’ve got the numbers down but that’s about it. Communication continues to remains the biggest obstacle.

This is the open ward that most of our patients are on.

During the day surgeries are performed. 2 kids at the same time are in one room. Patients that are post op are discharged and pre op patients are seen. We continue to have walk ins, that randomly show up. They have to be seen by all disciplines and approved for surgery. There were another 8 surgeries done today bring our total up to 40!

Pics of the amazing OR team.

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PACU in action.

After all the patients are tucked in for the night, we pile back in our vans and return to the hotel, visit for a bit with each other, eat dinner and go to bed most of us exhausted.

It hasn’t been all work. We were able to go shopping on Friday. We all loaded up on gifts and mementos. (I may be in big trouble on my return baggage weight limit.) It was the first time we were able to get out of the hotel and the local Rotarians took us out to lunch.

We also got the unexpected opportunity to have drinks and appetizers at the home of the Charge D’Affairs and COO of the US embassy John Danilwicz. The US Ambassador Dan Mozena came by and hung out with us. Our hosts were gracious and everyone was glad for the distraction.

It is our understanding that the Hartels will start up again tomorrow. Who knows what the week will hold. But as for the weekend… It was good all around.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

rul

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AMAZING isn’t it.

In the words of Wendy

I have traveled to the opposite side of the world. In doing so have made many friends for life on this trip. My room mate Dr. Wendy Delaney (she is one of the Pediatricians) is the only one I had met prior to the trip. We only live about an hour apart. We just met a few weeks ago when we had coffee and I attended her Rotary club’s weekly meeting. She is a fellow Rotarian with the Rotary club of South Forsyth. I am with the Rotary club of Etowah. We are both District 6910.

Wendy and I are SCARY alike.

The time change has been difficult on us. We are barely able to stay awake through dinner and up at 3am. We were both awake, and obviously thinking about the exact same thing, at 3am this morning. I don’t think ahead of time about what I’m going to write. It just kinda comes out. I was thinking about how we as Americans take so much for granted and so was Wendy. What she posted in the comment section of this blog deserves a more prominent place. So today, I will copy and paste Wendy’s words, because she said it better than I ever could…

Rommie – it is 3:25 am and for what is now the 4th morning in a row … My internal clock has told me it is time to get up. Subsequently, I took the time to get caught up on your posts. Amazing! You take 16 hours of the most grueling, emotionally and physically demanding day and are able to clarify it with one salient moment that captures the essence of what we are trying to accomplish here. I am humbled by this experience. I am struggling to work within the limits of what we have to provide the optimal outcome for each and every child. I feel as if each one is my very own child and anything less is unacceptable. I have heard repeatedly from team-mates ,,, “Dorothy, we aren’t in Kansas anymore” and it is so true. We gripe in the US because we have a copay, we have to wait 1 hr to see the doctor, because the doctor won’t give us what we want when we want it, because we don’t have a private hospital room or the hospital food sucks. But in Dhaka, they are happy for scraps. They don’t complain because there are 60 children on an open ward (with 2+ family members crammed in a small twin bed with them) and only 3-4 nurses. They don’t complain that they have to provide their own meals (except for the giant bowl of gruel that is proudly passed around each night), that they provide their own sheets, or that they have to provide all their own nursing care including medication administration, and cleaning/tending/consoling of their child. What happens to parents who have to work and can’t just come and sit day and night ? – well, they just don’t come! They don’t complain that they share their open ward with a ferrel cat, geckos, and more cockroaches than I care to think about. They don’t complain that there is no air-conditioning and only a few random fans that actually work and it is 90+ oF. They don’t complain that the lighting is so bad that you can hardly see the layers of refuse, dust and grim that coat everything in this place or about the rust that covers every surface of the 40 yr old iron bed that their child is laying on that tilts awkwardly to one side (and safety side rails … what they heck are those?). They don’t complain as the hold their child’s IV bag over their heads for hours in order for them to take their child out to the open air hallway to get some “fresh” (by that I mean polluted but less stagnant and rancid) air. They don’t complain that they have traveled 5 hrs, wait all day to be evaluated, and are told at the end of the day that they must wait for another 6 -12 hours in order for a charity bed to become available. Instead, they are overjoyed that their child will have a chance to not be a Monster. They are ecstatic that their child will actually have an opportunity to be a wife/husband, have a family and job of their own rather than be an outcast or freakish beggar on the street like so many other Bengali unfortunates born with physical deformities. They don’t complain about the dead and dying all around them … They are just thankful that for today, it is not their child.

So, today as things may not go as planned, as I am frustrated repeatedly, as I am thwarted by inefficiency and by my own short-comings as a person and a Doctor … I will remember these people and how grateful they are. I couldn’t agree more with You – I am humbled by these people and I ALWAYS receive much more than I ever give.

So, as I make rounds with the team in the next few hours, i will remind myself again …We (I) make a difference, but not just in individual smiles … we provide HOPE – a commodity in Bangladesh that is often in very short supply.

Wendy Delaney

Wendy has the ability to put into words what I have to block out on this mission or I couldn’t function. I think it’s impossible to paint the complete picture of what we are dealing with here. You have to see it, be in it, to really understand it. Even then, it is simply unfathomable to us at times.

I thank Wendy, for saying what I could not, and I am grateful that in traveling half way around the world I have had the opportunity to not only work with such an amazing woman, but to now call her my friend.

This is the view of the hospital from outside of the OR.

View from beneath PACU.

Looking out from the open air PACU. People are living here.

***if the pictures are a little grainy and not beautiful they are taken by me with my phone camera and not by Fowler. His are the ones that are spectacular!***

The bad news, the good news and why I should have paid more attention in government class.

The bad news, the good news and why I should have paid more attention in government class.

**Disclaimer… I am writing this as we are flying to LAX, where we will have a 5 hour layover. I will post from Los Angeles, before we start the 15-16 hour trip to our 3 hour layover in China, before our 4-5 hour flight into Dhaka. This post is much heavier than I had envisioned and I’m not sure when I will have the ability to post again. I am writing on my iPhone and from here on out, I am without my stellar editors. Please bare with my terrible punctuation (I’m, pretty, sure, I, have, added, too, many, commas, and, overcompensated), probable typos, and high likely hood of grammatical errors. If you must judge me then do it on content.***

Everyone said this would be a life-changing trip. I didn’t realize it would start before I ever left. We had been told we needed to be very flexible. I can do flexible, but don’t always like it. We also knew that if the State Department issued a travel warning then the entire mission would be scrapped.

Yesterday I was completely stressed out and self-absorbed in tying up loose ends, seeing my patients, getting last minute junk I might need, and packing. I hate packing. I am convinced the main reason I started this blog was to put off packing as long as possible. We are only allowed to bring one checked bag. Our other “bag” is for equipment and supplies that we will use. It’s is challenging for me to pack for 2 weeks when I don’t know what to expect. We are also taking gifts, for the kids, the hospital staff and our host families.

In the middle of my frantic, “I’m in total panic because I leave tomorrow” day, my somewhat concerned husband, texted me a link to the India Times. My husband rarely gets concerned. Evidently yesterday one of the leaders of the Islamic party was sentenced to death by a war tribunal. He was on trial for for war crimes that had occurred in 1971. Nasty stuff. I pretty much slept through my college government class, so I barely understand how my own government works, and until today knew nothing about the government of Bangladesh. I certainly didn’t realize that this one verdict would impact our mission.

In a nutshell, there were a bunch of people that were happy that this man had been found guilty and a bunch of people that were not. This lead to protests, which lead to violence, which lead to 44 people being killed. So in protest of the killing of these people the Islamic party has called for a hartal.

This is copied straight from the US Embassy’s email I received… “A hartal is a mass protest, and can involve a total shutdown of the country. It is a recognized political method for articulating any political demand. Hartals can turn violent if the population, or political groups, enforce the shut down. Violence can also occur the evening/night before a hartal. We advise all U.S. citizens to exercise caution and avoid unnecessary travel throughout the country.”

Tina, our fearless team leader, emailed the team to inform us of what was going on and to say it was up to us individually to decide if we still wanted to go. As of our 2:55 departure from Atlanta to Los Angeles the state department had not issued a travel warning, despite the strong words of caution in their email. Our Rotary host assured us that it was safe and Sib, one of the doctors that has been there for 2 weeks, also said there was nothing to be concerned about.

I did discuss what was going on with my husband. Every now and then, I listen to AND follow his advice. We decided that the risk was probable still minimal and that I would go. Not surprisingly, the entire team decided to press on.

Unfortunately, the civil unrest does affect us. We no longer will be able to move about freely. In fact, I believe we will be confined to the hotel for the duration of the strike. Because of the 48 hour shut down, we will not be able to start seeing patients on Monday as planned. It will be Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning before we can get started. Sadly this means we will not be able to operate on as many kids.

This morning, as I was saying goodbye to my husband, children, and friends, the self absorbed stress of yesterday seemed very trivial compared to deaths of 44 people. All killed because of a man’s being sentenced to death, for being involved in the killing of 3 million people. (I can’t even come close to wrapping my head around that figure.) All I could do was take time to be in the moment. Because when it comes down to it, we can’t predict how many moments any of us have left.

So the bad news is that we will not be able to help as many as we wanted to. The good news is that we are still going and will see as many kids as possible. And even if I had paid better attention in my government class, I guess I’ll never understand why anyone would think that killing another human being solves anything.

And the Oscar goes to….

And the Oscar goes to….

No one wins an Oscar on their own. Most recipients have a well thought out speech to thank all of those who helped them get where they are. So here is mine. I’m thankful that I can do this sitting on the sofa in pajamas, without fear of tripping and falling in front of millions.

There is a great line in Christmas Vacation where Clark says in reference to cousin Eddie, ” My cousin in-law, whose heart is bigger than his brain…” That phrase can be used to describe me on occasion. Our Rotary District Governor, Margie Eddy-Forbes, spoke to us last fall about Alliance for Smiles and the world service project. This project is close to her heart and you can tell that when she talks about it. I cornered her after she was finished and told her I really wanted to be a part of this project. She gave me the info and encouraged me to apply.

I assumed that when one is crazy enough to spontaneously volunteer to go to Bangladesh for 2 weeks, they simply say “Come on we’d love to have ya!” This is not the case. I didn’t consider that the volunteer pool would be world wide. The application process was more grueling than any job I’ve ever applied for. Thank goodness I had Tina Hollcroft, mission director, and Barbara Fisher, quartermaster, in my corner. Without them I don’t know that I would have even been considered. Even then I had a few obstacles to overcome.

First, my Pediatric Advanced Life Support and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support certifications had expired. I told AFS that I would get my certification within 2 weeks. Recertification online was going to cost me $500 out of pocket. I contacted my friend, paramedic/ACLS instructor, Brian Irish to borrow his books. He kindly offered for me to recertify with the fine folks at Redmond EMS in Summerville, GA. Not only was I PALS and ACLS certified 2 days later, he didn’t charge me a dime.

Second, did I mention that I was applying for the position of recovery room nurse and I’ve never technically worked in a recovery room? Don’t get me wrong, I’ve recovered a ton of kids post operatively but they all came directly back to the Pediatric ICU. This is where our outstanding local hospital, Cartersville Medical Center, came to the rescue. They graciously allowed me to come observe for a few days in their recovery room. So, to April and her amazing team of nurses… Thank you for showing me how it’s done in a real recovery room. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to learn from!

I owe a HUGE thank you to the dedicated folks at Alliance for Smiles. You had faith and accepted me despite my short comings. I will not let you down. Please check out the alliance for smiles website at: http://www.allianceforsmiles.org.

I also need to thank Georgia Bone and Joint and Mark Ellis with Physician Sales and Service for donating desperately needed and expensive anesthesia supplies. You guys are awesome!

To Monir, my sweet new friend from Bangladesh, thank you for answering all of my questions, educating me about your beautiful country and hooking me up with Ishana, who will be there to help me when I arrive.

To Randi Sonenshine, you are an excellent editor, especially considering what you have to work with. You make me appear to be a decent writer and have taught me more in a week than I learned in years of school. I realize I am much better with comas than I am with commas.

I couldn’t do this without the support of my incredible friends, who love me as is and don’t ask me to change, all the Rotarians who have played a role, and countless others who wish to remain unnamed. (You know who you are!)

And last but not least, thank you to my family. To my sister, thanks for the tech support. You will make an incredible RN. To my son, thank you for the endless hugs and always making me smile. You have taught me through years of soccer, about giving 110% and being a team player. To my daughter, who is my role model, you make me believe every day that I can do anything I put my mind to. You are amazing. To my husband/ assistant editor, I love you. Thank you for always being there, holding down the fort while I’m on the other side of the world, putting up with me constantly multitasking, and keeping me around for 28 years. You have given me a wonderful life.

The one thing I haven’t mentioned is that I already have an Oscar. My Dad Oscar Leverette. He’s much better than the little gold statue. To my dad and mom, thank you both for teaching me the importance of giving back. You have shown me a lifetime of examples on how to do just that. I love you!

Thank you world!

In 48 hours I had 900 followers in 7 countries and 1200 views. This response completely blows me away. I am shocked, humbled, and profoundly grateful for all of you. In this world, where we are bombarded with endless negativity, it is inspirational to know that so many people care. I thank you for your time, your kind words and your continued support.

This is all Barbara’s fault!

This is all Barbara’s fault!

We moved to Cartersville in 2004. That’s when I met one of my dear friends Barbara. She and I have been running together for almost 10 years. Every Tuesday she would start earlier, most of the time without me. 5:30am was already WAY earlier than I wanted to be up, but she had to get to Rotary by 7:30am.

Let’s face it, when anyone mentions Rotary the first thing that comes to mind is a bunch of stuffy old business men, in starched suits, sitting around listening to a monotone speaker and discussing all the rigid rules of Rotary. And heaven help you if you missed a meeting! I was convinced there was a secret Rotary dungeon where they would tie you to a post and beat you if you were unable to attend.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The top reasons people join Rotary are…

1. Business Development (This should be last, in my opinion.)
2. Friendship
3. Citizenship
4. Service

I was a hospice nurse working sometimes 60 hours a week when I broke down and attended my first meeting. It seemed like the thing to do, and if Barb was a part of it…surely it couldn’t be all that bad. Not only was it not that bad, it was life changing.

I hate stereotypes, so let me dispel a few myths.

1. No stuffy old men. My club’s members range in age from 20s to 60s.

2. You are not required to wear a starched suit. In fact, you can actually wear jeans. I frequently show up in scrubs when I’m seeing patients.

3. No monotone speakers. Members rotate bringing speakers. Not only are they not dull, they are informative, interesting and entertaining. We even had a hypnotist speak to us not long ago.

4. There are rules. There always are. But the 4 Way Pledge of the things we think, say or do is more like the golden rule and very simple: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build good will and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned? Trust me, if everyone lived by these rules, the world would be a much better place!

5. There are no dungeons. In fact you CAN miss a meeting. All you have to do is make it up by attending another Rotary club, reading informative articles online or performing service activities. I figure 2 weeks in Bangladesh gives me make-ups for life!

So here I am 2 years later, proud to call myself a Rotarian. I give my time to Rotary. I sit on the Board. I show up (most) Tuesdays. I attend the functions. I spontaneously volunteer to go on a 2 week medical mission trip to Bangladesh. Why, you ask?

1. I have established the most incredible friendships that will last a lifetime. My friends are precious to me, and I don’t know what I would do without them.

2. Rotary has given me the chance to become a participating member of my community.

3. Now I truly have the opportunity to “fix things” on a local, state, national and WORLD level!

4. Without the support, help and advice of many members I would have never had the guts to go out on a limb and start my own patient advocacy business.

The simple truth is this: Rotary, and the amazing people in Rotary, give me far more than I could ever give back.

So this is clearly all Barbara’s fault! I can’t thank her enough. And in the next few weeks, I CAN NOT WAIT to see how Rotary will continue to change my life.

And so it begins…

And so it begins…

I’m on a mission. I’m usually on a mission, but this one is a bit different. I am headed to Dhaka, Bangladesh through Rotary for their world service project. Our multinational team will be doing cleft palate repairs through Alliance for Smiles. I will be one of the recovery room nurses.

Dhaka is referred to as the most crowded city on the face of the earth. Here is why…

In my hometown of Cartersville, Georgia there are 19,000 people in 23 square miles or 800 people per square mile.

In Metro Atlanta, Ga there are 5,300,000 in 8,300 square miles or 630 people per square mile.

In Dhaka there are 7,000,000 in 140 square miles or almost 60,000 people per square mile. (I can not even imagine!)

Here are a few more interesting numbers:

30 = hours it will take to get there
19 = members of our international team
16 = days I will be gone
13 = hours ahead of my eastern time zone
10-14 = hours of work each day
120 = cleft palate repairs the last team performed

When I told my husband Steve that I was considering going on this mission the conversation went something like this…

Me- “I think I’m going to go on a medical mission trip to Bangladesh. I’d like your opinion.”

Steve- “Honey, do you REALLY want my opinion or do I just need to keep quiet and accept that you are going to do this?” (He knows me well.)

Me-“I really want your opinion, but you need to accept that I’m going to do this.” (I might be a little stubborn.)

Considering that I don’t particularly like air travel, working night shifts, or large crowds, this experience will definitely push my boundaries. (The fact that I won’t constantly be able to use my iPhone is a whole other blog.) Admittedly, I can be an unrealistic, Pollyanna, head-in-the-sand-as-a-way-of-coping kinda girl. But some of the greatest things I’ve done in my life have started with someone (usually my poor husband) saying, “That doesn’t sound like such a great idea” or “Have you lost your mind?” OK, some of the worst things I’ve done have started with those phrases too, but we won’t dwell on that.

So I’m thinking… What in the world have I gotten myself into now? Honestly, I have no idea. However, these things I know: I’m beyond excited despite the challenges I will face. I love being a nurse, and I think it is the greatest job in the world. And most important of all…I may not be able to fix the entire world right now, but I certainly can fix a little part of someone else’s world.

And so it begins.