Blog

Cusco, Peru | 2013

Cusco, Peru is one of MMFC’s longest-running missions. This year, with Dr. Helen John-Kelly as the team leader, we returned from June 14th to 23rd with a 24 person team of doctors, nurses, speech pathologists, volunteers, and administrative staff, ready for a busy week of cleft, microtia, and dental surgeries.

By Saturday afternoon most of the team had arrived. With Cusco’s elevation being over 11,000 feet, altitude sickness is a big concern, so in order to avoid having any sick team members, Sunday is a day of rest on this mission, a low-key day to acclimate to the altitude.  Many team members went to the Sunday market in Pisac to get their souvenir shopping done early. With so many first-timers on this trip, there was a lot of nervousness and plenty of questions, but everyone was excited and anxious to get to work.

The team arrived at the EsSalud hospital on Monday full of energy and focus, and was welcomed by a lobby jam-packed with patients and their families waiting to be screened. This was screening day – always the most hectic day of the week on any mission, but especially so with such a large team. Thanks to careful planning and coordination with local staff, the team screened over 100 cleft, microtia, and dental patients in just a few hours, and by that evening MMFC had all of its cases scheduled for the rest of the week.

Throughout the course of the four operating days, using two operating rooms, the MMFC team completed surgeries on 13 microtia patients, 16 cleft patients, and 25 dental patients. Those numbers did not come easily, though; the days were long (12-16 hours!) and exhausting. But thanks to everyone’s hard work, we were able to help many beautiful and deserving children.

Saul Quispe

Saul is a 12 year old boy who lives with his parents three hours outside of Cusco. He was born with moebius syndrome, a rare neurological disorder that causes facial paralysis. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to not be able to form any facial expressions, which play a huge role in our daily interaction with the world around us. This year, our surgical team successfully completed a thigh muscle graft on Saul. This was the first of this type of surgery for MMFC, and the biggest reward is that now Saul can finally smile.

Rommel Cartagena

Rommel is two months old and lives with his parents in Anta, a town about an hour away from Cusco. When he was born, the doctor told his parents about MMFC’s annual Cusco mission and suggested they bring Rommel to repair his cleft lip. Our team operated on Rommel on Tuesday, and his parents were so thrilled with the result that they wanted Dr. John-Kelly to be their son’s godmother! Rommel’s father is a driver, and he even offered to drive our team around when we return next year. This is a terrific example of how MMFC’s commitment to its mission sites, and the fact that we return annually, allows local physicians to refer patients to us that could not otherwise afford a cleft surgery. They know from year to year when we will be returning and more important, that we will return.

Sebastian and Luciano Ripa

Sebastian and Luciano are four-year-old twin brothers. They were both born with a cleft lip – one with a bilateral cleft and the other with a unilateral cleft – and they had both come to MMFC’s Cusco mission in prior years to have those repaired. This year, they returned to receive dental care and have palatal obturators fitted. No one likes going to the dentist, especially if it means having teeth pulled, but these two boys seemed to always be smiling. We love to see past patients return – especially when they have a smile on their face!

Cesar Paro

Cesar celebrated his 18th birthday while recovering from surgery to repair his primary microtia.

Zoraida Ima

Zoraida, three months old, received surgery to repair her unilateral cleft lip.

Our mission to Cusco was a success once again, and it would not have been possible without so many different groups of people working together to make it happen – MMFC is extremely grateful to EsSalud for welcoming us into their facilities, to Edouard Ruelle and the Children of Peru Foundation for their generous sponsorship of the mission, to our wonderful local coordinators Ani Forsyth, Patty Galup, and Susana Mayer, and especially to this year’s team of extremely hard-working and dedicated volunteers.