More of the Vanderbilt Gang...

(Click Photos to Enlarge)

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Dr. Mike (or "Uncle Mike" as he was affectionately referred to) is the other half of the Vanderbilt cardiology team that traveled to Tenwek Hospital. He traveled to Tenwek 11 months prior to our group visit to evaluate potential patients for our first trip this past Novemeber. He and Dr. Staci evaluated hundred's of patients prior to and during our cardiac week at Tenwek in order to choose the 9 patients that we operated on during our 6 days of surgery this past November. He is the brains (and apparently the "brawn"... see lower right picture) of our whole Tenwek experience. He had the vision, the contacts and the compassion to partner with Tenwek surgeon Dr. Russ as well as World Medical Missions, the medical arm of Samaritan's Purse to make this trip a reality for our patients. He worked diligently for over a year to pull the whole trip together for all of us. He was also responsible for keeping the Vanderbilt team as well as the team from Brown University Medical School in Rhode Island organized with our early morning teleconference meetings, and the lists... oh so many lists! We couldn't have done it without you Uncle Mike!

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Dr. Dave was the lead pediatric cardiac surgeon at Tenwek on our trip. He is the Chairman of the Department of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital and he "fixed" all of the little hearts during our time at Tenwek.
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Now for our nurses... these ladies kept all of us in line and pulled it all together for our team and for our patients at Tenwek. Along with the Intensivits, they had probably the hardest job of all during our trip. They were working in the same conditions as the rest of us, but they did it around the clock every day for an entire week with very little sleep. Because they were working "floating shifts" each day, they were either in the ICU for up to 12-16 hrs/day or sleeping very few hrs per day so they could get up and do it all over again. They did a wonderful job and they did it with a smile every day as you'll see as you follow along... Check out those pearly whites!

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We had two Pediatric Intensivists on the trip from Vanderbilt... Dr. Rick and Dr. Marek. Both of them covered the ICU at Tenwek hospital 24 hrs per day during our stay. They worked hand-in-hand with the ICU nurses to manage the patients post-operatively to make sure they not only survived, but made speedy recoveries. Their job was not an easy one with the limited amount of monitors , equipment and supplies that were available at Tenwek, and the long hours that each of them worked.