Getting ready to say "Zaijian"

"Zaijian" in Chinese means goodbye. The time has really flown. We did our last surgery today--tomorrow we're going to visit the kids for the last time. The boy in this picture was the last to have surgery.


In this picture he is with another boy from his orphanage, who had surgery at the beginning of the mission.


This last real day went on as usual. Below is a picture of Dr. Hyman and Dr. Roye examining some x-rays before surgery.


One of our volunteers, Jane, receiving a tattoo from a post-op kid.


In this picture, one of our nurses, Betsy, holds a baby recovering from surgery for a cleft lip.


We made little care packages of books and crayons and stencil and paper for the kids to take home. Below is a picture of our wonderful volunteers from Paul Hastings law firm in Shanghai who made time to help on the mission.



It's hard to think about leaving these children and not being there to care for them medically or cheer them up with paper bag puppets. Knowing that every single one of these kids is going to return to a physical environment that in some way is compromised makes it hard to feel at ease about our departure. We have an impact on these kids lives, but they have a significant impact on ours as well. It is very intense while we are in the midst of the mission, but when we return to our regular lives we will process what we've seen, the kids who we were able to provide surgery for, those who we couldn't help on this mission and the thousands upon thousands of children in need we don't even know about.