Warren Nurse Helps Kids on Colombia Mission
By Kim North Shine, Detroit Free Press
Jul. 20–As a recovery nurse, Susan Bauer of Warren is used to seeing patients who often need something to bring comfort, something to get them through pain.
So she was impressed with the bravery of the patients she saw on a trip to Colombia as part of a volunteer team for Healing the Children. They operated on children, many of them with cleft lips and palates.
"These kids were such little troupers, barely a peep out of them," said Bauer, 49, who works for an agency that provides supplemental staff to Henry Ford Hospital. "They barely had a sheet on them to keep them warm, or a blanket, and they didn’t complain."
Bauer made the trip to a town called Villavicencio in the state of Meta, where hundreds of families came from all around for the free surgeries that are hard to come by there.
The group of about 20 doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists and translators came from Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania and took one day off for a government-sponsored trip to a ranch, where there was a barbecue, dancing and other cultural experiences.
"We worked 10-, 12- sometimes 16-hour days. … We took a bus from the hotel to the hospital in the morning and stayed until the last patient was recovered," she said. "It was a lot of work, but it was so cool. It was just so amazing."
QUESTION: How did you learn about this trip?
ANSWER: I was talking to one of the surgical techs I work with. He’s been going for 10 years off and on, to different places in Colombia. My boyfriend is Colombian, so I had an interest, and I’ve always wanted to do a mission and never had the opportunity.
Q: Did you work from a hospital?
A: We used their hospital. We provided the surgeons and the ancillary staff to do the surgeries. We basically had to provide everything: the sheets, the blankets, the antibiotics, the Tylenol, the boxes of toys. … I’ll tell you, the big hits were the Beanie Babies.
For the next trip, I am going to take home all of the little footsies that the patients here don’t want to take home. I’ll wash them and send them over with the next shipment so the kids will have something to keep their feet warm.
Q: How many surgeries were completed in how many days?
A: We did probably 60 or 70. The trip was a total of like 10 days. … The first day was traveling. We went through Miami, organized the supplies and stuff. We arrived and spent the night in Bogota (Colombia), and we took a military transport through the mountains to get to Villavicencio. The next day, the doctors and anesthesia people were screening all the kids to decide who they would operate on.
Q: Was there a long line to meet the doctors?
A: Oh, yeah. To sum it up, we worked for the State of Meta, and all the people came from all the little cities around Meta.
Q: Why are these surgeries so hard to come by there?
A: They don’t have the doctors. But the doctors who went with us are teaching the doctors there. They’ll do follow-up and eventually learn the surgery. It’s very exciting.
For more information on Healing the Children, go to www.healingthechildren.org.
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