ReSurge International
First Days in Kathmandu
Kathmandu, Nepal - Nina Vaswani and Katherine Hobbs, ReSurge volunteers.
We arrived in Kathmandu around noon on Monday July 9. We were picked up and warmly welcomed by two members of the Kathmandu Model Hospital plastics team who gave us beautiful flower necklaces upon our arrival.
The next morning we eagerly left for our first visit to the hospital. We entered a small plastic surgery office, located on the peripheral of the main hospital, the largest in Kathmandu. We took in the room around us, peering at before and after pictures of cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn contracture patients, hand-drawn charts comparing the nature of the cases sponsored by the Resurge surgical outreach program and the whiteboard listing the surgeries for the day. It is an understatement to say that the room serves many purposes. It is the surgical team’s office, lounge, patient consultation room, physical therapy office and lunchroom. We watched in amazement of the gamut of activity going on around us. It was in this office that we met Dr. Rai, ReSurge’s surgical outreach partner. After hearing so much about him, it was a great pleasure to meet him in person; Dr. Rai is everything that we had learned about him—warm, enthusiastic, hospitable and immensely humble. We discussed his background and his history as a surgeon and specifically the road that led him to his work in Nepal.
Before we knew it we were in our scrubs and headed into the operating room to see the surgical team at work. As it was our first surgery, we timidly watched the procedure from the end of the operating table. The doctors were correcting a cleft palate—a procedure that they have seen thousands of times. However, Dr. Rai explained that this was an especially difficult procedure as the cleft palate was extremely large. Seeing as there is only a limited amount of available tissue on the roof of the mouth, the gap was hard to close. We watched the team perform more of the day’s surgeries and soon became accustomed to the pace and happenings of the operating room.
After some noodles and tea back in the office, Dr. Rai led us on a short walk to meet some of the program’s directors. We learned of the plans for the new hospital he is building which include a ward dedicated entirely to acute burn patients—a facility that will greatly aid Dr. Rai and his team in their treatment of burn patients. The whiteboard in the office listed the tasks that they need to address concerning the hospital, including efforts to use sustainable energy sources to power the hospital. A lot of work remains before the hospital will be up and running, but their dedication and enthusiasm are inspiring!
Overall it was great few days to start off our time in Nepal. We cannot wait to aid the team in any way possible over the next few weeks and we are eager to absorb everything we can learn about Nepal, its culture, and its medical care.
First Days in Kathmandu
Kathmandu, Nepal - Nina Vaswani and Katherine Hobbs, ReSurge volunteers.
We arrived in Kathmandu around noon on Monday July 9. We were picked up and warmly welcomed by two members of the Kathmandu Model Hospital plastics team who gave us beautiful flower necklaces upon our arrival.
The next morning we eagerly left for our first visit to the hospital. We entered a small plastic surgery office, located on the peripheral of the main hospital, the largest in Kathmandu. We took in the room around us, peering at before and after pictures of cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn contracture patients, hand-drawn charts comparing the nature of the cases sponsored by the Resurge surgical outreach program and the whiteboard listing the surgeries for the day. It is an understatement to say that the room serves many purposes. It is the surgical team’s office, lounge, patient consultation room, physical therapy office and lunchroom. We watched in amazement of the gamut of activity going on around us. It was in this office that we met Dr. Rai, ReSurge’s surgical outreach partner. After hearing so much about him, it was a great pleasure to meet him in person; Dr. Rai is everything that we had learned about him—warm, enthusiastic, hospitable and immensely humble. We discussed his background and his history as a surgeon and specifically the road that led him to his work in Nepal.
Before we knew it we were in our scrubs and headed into the operating room to see the surgical team at work. As it was our first surgery, we timidly watched the procedure from the end of the operating table. The doctors were correcting a cleft palate—a procedure that they have seen thousands of times. However, Dr. Rai explained that this was an especially difficult procedure as the cleft palate was extremely large. Seeing as there is only a limited amount of available tissue on the roof of the mouth, the gap was hard to close. We watched the team perform more of the day’s surgeries and soon became accustomed to the pace and happenings of the operating room.
After some noodles and tea back in the office, Dr. Rai led us on a short walk to meet some of the program’s directors. We learned of the plans for the new hospital he is building which include a ward dedicated entirely to acute burn patients—a facility that will greatly aid Dr. Rai and his team in their treatment of burn patients. The whiteboard in the office listed the tasks that they need to address concerning the hospital, including efforts to use sustainable energy sources to power the hospital. A lot of work remains before the hospital will be up and running, but their dedication and enthusiasm are inspiring!
Overall it was great few days to start off our time in Nepal. We cannot wait to aid the team in any way possible over the next few weeks and we are eager to absorb everything we can learn about Nepal, its culture, and its medical care.