Thursday, March 10th Live Blog:

It’s only 11:20AM here, but we’ve had some touching moments already. Healing after spine surgery is a mental and physical experience.

Pain is sometimes too much to bear. Back to rest with pain medications and a first walk later. We need to remember he was bed-bound for 2 weeks until we treated him. He’s a brave young man.

We started the day as usual with a very interesting lecture from one of POP’s medical team. Here is Brian McCarty delivering a resident round on the benefits of Neuromonitoring during surgery.

Heading into surgery can be frightening. Jessica, one of POP’s neuromonitoring technologists is bilingual and comforts her minutes before leaving for the OR.

The love of a mother’s hands moments before being wheeled to the OR for scoliosis surgery. This is Abigail. She received one round of scoliosis surgery during POP’s first mission. Today’s surgery will hopefully complete all of the treatment she will need. She’s brave to go through this intensive procedure again.

A girl walks back to her room while her mother looks on with amazement! Melany was tall to begin with, she’s inches taller today.

Moments like these are golden. Smiling comfortably hugging her POP teddy bear, who she generously named “Mady Luna” after POP’s co-founder and Santiago spine surgeon Dr. Miguel Luna.

Another reality check moment. POP’s facility improvement project this mission trip was to renovate the cast room. Here you can see why. The hospital does not have a working cast saw. Patients are being told to soak the casts in water and then return where staff can try to help remove it for them. Here we see a patient on the floor, outside of the cast room (because it’s undergoing renovation) and a friend helps cut the cast off with wire cutters. This leaves much room for infection. We know that our shipment arrived at the port during our visit and will soon be at the hospital. The cast room staff will have both an electric and a backup manual cast saw in the hopes of preventing this in the future.

Mid-day we had a very interesting Nursing lecture by ICU nurse Jennifer Felber on Fluid Balance post-surgery. The local nurses were incredibly engaged and everyone learned a lot from each other.

Burning the mid-night oil, POP staff members head back to the cast room to work on decorations prior to the shipment arriving so the room is ready. Here POP’s co-founder, Dr. Madelyn Stazzone (also a Pediatric Radiologist) and POP’s Director of Marketing, Lisa Simani-Oren (also a nurse) paint the background of our mini-mural. It’s late, but the positive energy of the day and of our patients and friends here give us all the energy we need!

With everyone’s work done for the day, we wait for our mini bus to collect us from the hospital to take us to our home away from home to change for dinner. It’s late, but everyone is hungry.

Wednesday, March 9th Recap:

POP made history today! We took on our first trauma case. A 17-year old boy who suffered a terrible motorcycle accident. Patients sat up and walked to their parents, and a reunion of previous patients happened this afternoon. We weren’t even supposed to take on a 7th patient because we only had 1 OR to work with, so the original plan was to use Wednesday as a clean-up and prep for the final 3 cases day and a cast room lecture. Since the shipment didn’t arrive and we found out about this young man, we were agile and changed our course of action to help him. If we didn’t treat this boy, he would have had to be in a body cast for 3-4 months.

Here is Ronald, a resident of Santiago. He’s 17 years old and sustained a spine fracture from a motorcycle accident. He was in bed for 2 weeks when we met him. He loved his bear and named him “peluche,” which means Teddy Bear. He did very well with his surgery.

Melany’s mom visits her as she recovers from scoliosis surgery.

A father’s smile watching his daughter sitting up for the first time nice and tall after surgery.

A mother gives a comforting kiss to her daughter after scoliosis surgery.

Her scoliosis incision looks great post-surgery!

Sleeping while hugging her bear!

Ann Rosen painted 3 butterflies on this wall in the orthopedic recovery room. Great job Ann! They love butterflies in the Dominican Republic.

POP’s Director of Development and Operations, Yvette López Adams painted the other wall. It looks lovely Yve! Great teamwork ladies!

A reunion of previous patients was held today! So many showed up and it was nice to hear how well they are all doing now thanks to POP and our supporters!

The volunteer group at the hospital had a cake made with our logo for a celebration today! Gracias!

Former patients visit current patients to help them recover. What a wonderful day!

Tuesday, March 8th

All in all, today was a very successful day! 2 scoliosis surgeries were successfully completed, education of the doctors and nurses was done and renovations of the cast room continued. We left in the dark and came back to our hotel in the dark.

We started our shift in the dark of the AM, and ended in the dark. 14 hours done! Exhausted but a day well spent!

Dr. Rich Nigro gave rounds on anesthesia at 6:30am.

These are the screws and surgical instruments that are inserted into the patient’s spine during scoliosis surgery. Thank you to DePuy for the donation of instruments.

Here is patient 2, Laisha, giving her mom a kiss before she has surgery in the morning.

Nursing rounds mid-day today were about infection prevention for scoliosis patients by POP’s very own Director of Marketing, Lisa Simani-Oren, APN. She did a wonderful job enabling a cross-cultural conversation where we learned a lot about what is done here in Santiago.

One of our operating room nurses, Kelly, got ill and our team took care of her by putting in an IV. It’s amazing what some replacement fluids will do.

Thanks to one of our newest supporters in Massachusetts, POP was able to provide gowns to parents visiting their children. Here Dr. Phil Oren holds one up.

Laisha’s surgery went very smoothly. Her mother sheds a tear after seeing her daughter. She is doing very well after her surgery but it’s an emotional experience.

Monday’s patient, Karina, sits up in bed for the first time after surgery. Her incision looks good. Our former patient Melissa observes (right). Dr. Madelyn Stazzone, POP’s co-founder, and Nurse Beth examine Karina.

The operating room before the c-arm machine started to smoke, and spark. The machine didn’t make it but the patient, Melany, did very well with her surgery.

The planning phases for the cast room renovation are under way and the ortho ward decorations have been ongoing. Stay tuned to see the final product in the days coming. Here POP volunteers project the POP logo onto the wall of the cast room in order to stencil the outline and prep to paint. The hospital wanted us to paint the POP logo onto the wall because we were able to donate so many new pieces of equipment. They are just so loving and appreciative. We couldn’t do this without the generosity of our many donors.

Mothers of patients, new friendships made.

Our day in a nutshell:

Our day began with no water in the entire hospital and ended with the news that our X-ray machine was broken!! In between, we ran like a well-oiled machine! A successful surgery, medical and teaching lectures, painting done in the cast room and OR Ward, water issue fixed, a solution to our broken X-ray machine was provided, and a patient home visit was accomplished. Special bonus was that our previous patient has become a student nurse and came to the ICU to shadow our team today! Wonderful day despite our challenges!


We start each day at the hospital at 6:30am and begin with a lecture for the hospital doctors. Here we have Dr. Enrico Stazzone giving grand round lecture to the ortho residents on the classification of scoliosis. Dr. Stazzone is POP’s co-founder and is an orthopedic surgeon in St. Louis. His Spanish has improved and he can deliver most of the lecture in Spanish.

Karina, 16 awaiting surgery with her POP bear. She named him Jorge.

Her curvature. We can’t wait to show you her After photograph!

Thank you for the donations of biologics!

Our patient from 2 years ago, Melissa who is studying to be a nurse joined our POP team during this mission as a student nurse! Here she learns about the post-op care that scoliosis patients receive from ICU Nurse Beth Seebeck and ICU Physician Dr. Phil Oren. This is a first for POP that a former patient aspires to join us! Talk about giving back!

ICU nurse Jenny Felber teaching our former scoliosis patient Melissa some basics of post op care.

Thank you children of Immaculate Conception School for your lovely, thoughtful, and colorful get well cards! They adorn the walls of our ICU and will be one of the first images seen by our patients when they awaken from having surgery.

Ann Rosen painting the orthopedic recovery ward. Her father volunteered last year and helped to repair the sink in the OR. Giving back runs in the family! Ann is a college student at UCSB and is minoring in Spanish. She was also helpful in translating conversation between volunteers and patients and their families.

Yvette López Adams, Director of Development and Operations paints beautiful flowers on the walls of the orthopedic recovery wing on the wall opposite Ann’s rainbow.

Kelly Williams OR RN gives nursing lecture to Nurses of the Children’s Hospital in Santiago. The topic is pre surgery preparation and sterilization.

Our first successful scoliosis surgery of this mission trip completed! Karina is in the Pediatric ICU sleeping comfortably.

This is what a typical home is like of our patients. Inside the green home we interviewed our patient for tomorrow. She is a 12 year old girl who is teased about having a crooked spine and has pain from her scoliosis. Her mom is a single mother as her dad died last month!

Our patient Laisha (right) dreams of growing up to be a pediatrician.

On arrival to the hospital Dr. Oren examines Laisha. She will stay over-night and have surgery tomorrow morning. She asked if she will still be able to dance after her surgery. The answer is a resounding “Yes! You will be able to dance ballet, salsa or any dance you want.”

Here POP doctors collaborate to review Laisha’s x-rays the night before while meeting with her and her mother. A truly diverse and inclusive team work together to help those in need! Here we see (from left to right) Brian Ho- Anesthesiologist Assistant, Dr. Enrico Stazzone – POP co-founder, Dr. Madelyn Stazzone-POP co-founder, and Dr. Miguel Luna of Santiago. In the background, Dr. Oren-ICU Intensivist and Dr. Nigro-Anesthesiologist speak with mom and patient.

POP just completed it’s 5th Medical and Educational mission trip to Santiago, Dominican Republic and treated 7 children, 6 with scoliosis, and took on our first trauma patient – a 17 year old boy with a spinal fracture due to a motorcycle accident. We also held 8 lectures, 4 for the doctors and 4 for the nursing staff. Despite some challenges, we were also able to give a little love back to the hospital. We blogged about our trip live on Facebook, but you can read all about our journey in this blog recap that follows each day. Thank you to our many donors for your support. Without you, this trip would not be possible.

Day 1 Recap:

Today (3/6/16) was our prep day. We all assessed our work areas to ensure we had what we needed for our first surgical case tomorrow. We readied the OR, ICU and discussed plans for the cast room renovation. (We had trouble connecting to WiFi in the hospital so we will blog when we can.)

Challenges: Our large shipment of medical supplies that we were expecting to arrive during the week will not be delivered until after our mission. We will need to work around that expectation, but we can improvise!

The POP team 2016 on arrival at Hospital Infantil Regional Universitario Dr. Arturo Grullón. The suitcases you see here, do not contain our personal belongings. Rather, they contain the many supplies needed at the hospital.

We stopped on the way to hospital to purchase fans as there is no air conditioning in our unit. Today it was extremely hot and the fans will keep the patients and volunteers cool. We also bought pillows for the kids, hospital gowns, drinks and more for the kids – thank you to our donors for making this possible!

A welcome sign for us and our 5th medical mission.

The 2016 POP team on arrival at the Hospital Infantil Regional Universitario Dr. Arturo Grullón. This is what we bring with us in suitcases: medical supplies and surgical instruments (for each surgery we bring all of the rods and screws needed to straighten the curved spine of a child with scoliosis, bone marrow putty, and more), blankets, pillow cases, teddy bears, items to help the patients feel like themselves again (combs, brushes, etc), coloring books, board games, movies, portable DVD players, hand sanitizer, lotion, and basic snacks for the volunteers all thanks to the many donations of our generous supporters.

While POP is a non-denominational organization, we are an inclusive organization and have supporters and volunteers from all backgrounds. These are prayer blankets made by 4th graders at Immaculate Conception school in Missouri! Thank you to the children who made these! Thank you to our ICU nurse Elizabeth Seebeck for coordinating these items!

Blankets for our patients arrived from our Ambassador Michele Carter. They are set on the beds ready to use! The hospital doesn’t have blankets and so families must bring what they need. POP tries to help, and we can with generous donations like these!

Beds are set with pillow cases donated by a St. Louis area Brownie troop and bed covering (for mid mattress) hand made by Sandy Hamm. Thank you Sandy! Pillows are purchased locally by POP, thanks to donations made on our Web site.

POP volunteers ICU Nurse Beth and Anesthesiology team Dr. Rich Nigro and Assistant Brian Ho team up to take medication inventory for tomorrow’s first surgery. Beth has been with us on every mission!

Yvette López Adams, our Director of Development and Operations, was able to get many items donated, from medical supplies to goody bags full of fun things for our patients to enjoy. Thanks Yvette and thanks to our many donors!

Our operating room is ready for tomorrow morning and POP’s first patient of Mission #5.

This is a street scene on our bus ride to the hospital.