Healing Hearts in Honduras

Each February the Friends of Barnabas Foundation www.fobf.org sends a surgical team to San Pedro Sula, Honduras to perform heart surgery on the children there. Last year I was fortunate to be able to go and serve as a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit. This year as I stay at home 7months pregnant I pray for the Team, children and their families that all goes well.
One of my fellow nurses, Trena has a blog www.trenasue.blogspot.com where she is keeping everyone up to date on the happenings in Honduras this year. The team left on February 14 and has completed 13 surgeries and numerous cardiac catheterizations so far,and they are all doing well. I have posted some pictures from last year.


A prayer before each surgery


New heart, new found energy!

Last and unexpected patient of the mission


Our "ICU"

Almost Famous??!!

Last February I traveled to San Pedro Sula, Honduras on a medical mission. This mission was organized by the Friends of Barnabas Foundation http://www.fobf.org/, a Christian based mission group that provides medical care to the people of Honduras. I was first introduced to this team by two of the Pediatric heart surgeons that I worked with. They had taken a small team to Honduras the year before to perform open heart surgeries and catheterizations on the poor children in need and were very successful. So for one week I along with a team of doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, child life specialists and chaplains worked together and were able to successfully perform 9 open heart surgeries and 14 catheterizations. It was probably the hardest week of my life. We all put in a minimum 16hrs a day/night and we were working in an environment that wasn't really equipped to handle open heart surgeries. We brought all of our own supplies, medications, and equipment so they were very limited. I along with two other nurses and one doctor worked the night shift in our makeshift ICU. Although it was about the most stressful exhausting week of my life, I would do it all over again because it was such a rewarding experience.

Along for the ride was a photographer from D magazine and she had an article about our mission published in the October 2008 issue of D magazine. I was shocked to see my picture when I opened the issue. The picture is me working on my very first night getting a patient back from the OR. The stessed/ panic look on my face is because I just realized my patient was bleeding out and needed to go back to the OR. He was taken back and the bleed was stopped and he is a happy little boy today. My friend started a blog during the trip, so take a look!http://www.trenasue.blogspot.com/