Post by Eileen Asahi

We have 98 children on our list to screen for this weeks surgeries.   Most likely, we will be able to do 50-80 surgeries within the timeframe that we have.  Patients are scheduled to arrive either at 9am, 11am or 1pm.  We have our stations all set up and are ready to go by 8:45.

Most children arrive with 4 or 5 family members so this is a big challenge to move 400-500 people through the screening process.  We have a wonderful group of volunteer translators from Birthright Foundation who are each assigned to a family as they move through the process.

Lucy Unanyan and Ani Nina Oganyan

Mira Mitri and Seda Abgaryan

It took an hour or two to fine tune our system, but things run as smoothly as can be expected.

Many families have come from long distances, one of them drove 8 hours to get to the hospital.  We hope that this child will be a good candidate for surgery this week.  There are children brought from the orphanages by Dr. Suzy Voskanyan.

The day went by quickly but we were all exhausted after the last patient has gone through.  Now it is time for the surgeons and staff to decide the week’s surgery schedule.  The doctors review each case and put names on a board, moving them around to schedule so that the youngest children are the first cases of the day, the cleft surgeries are also early in the day so they can check for any bleeding before leaving at the end of the day.