POP Happenings Blog

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.