Eye Surgery Patient Meeting

We just finished up our second patient meeting for PazSalud's upcoming Eye Surgery Mission on May 14 and all our patients are ready to go!  We have a full roster of people selected from our General Medical Mission in Comasagua in February who will have either cataract or pterygium surgery so we're bringing down a full team of ophthalmologists, optometrists and support personnel to operate on roughly 65 patients in a nearby hospital in Santa Tecla.

Given the nature of this mission and seriousness of surgery in general, PazSalud holds two patient information meetings where we talk to them in depth about the surgery itself, what it entails before, during and after, and the logistics of their participation.  The meetings are a great way for them to ask questions about the process and decide whether or not they want to have surgery with us.  In addition, they allow us to gauge the patient's interest which enables us to better prepare our team with adequate supplies and proper scheduling.

Kathy Garcia (Director of PazSalud), Delmy (the local CIS coordinator), Rosy and Rosa (PazSalud volunteers and friends) and I helped organize and conduct the meeting held in the community center of Comasagua.

Kathy Garcia and Rosa registering patients for the meeting

Rosy talking to the patients about surgery

Patient Pre-surgey Meeting

We just completed out second and final meeting on Saturday to prepare our cataract and pterygium  patients from Tamanique for the upcoming PazSalud Eye Surgery Mission on May 11.  The pre-surgery meetings are designed to go over the logistics of the event, address their concerns and provide them with an opportunity to ask us anything they want.  We're anticipating that we'll have 67 patients this year among which we'll have 48 cataract and 23 pterygium surgeries (some patients have more than one surgery).

A huge 'thank you' goes out to Maira, Rosa and Rosy for all the help they gave me in coordinating and conducting these meetings.

Rosy, Rosa and Maira fielding questions from the group

Rosa registering a patient

Maira conferring with a patient