A hard days work of learning and practicing a trade, helping benefit his brothers and sisters here at the Rancho Santa Fe…placing the stones and bricks, mortar and rods, Bartolo (a pequeño himself) helped to build the Holy Family Surgery Center for NPH Honduras, during which time a small tumor in his chest began to grow. Now, four years after he helped to change a dream into sweat and sweat into walls, those same walls helped to change him.
With the scrubs put away and the patients sewn up, President of NPH International, Father Phil Cleary visited the newly opened Centro Quirujico Sagrada Familia or Holy Family Surgery Center. There he, along with Doctor Peter Daly, his wife Lulu, a group of doctors and nurses from Minnesota, Reinhart Koehler, Stefan Feuerstein, Dan Hottinger a volunteer helping to prepare the center, the newly elected student leaders of NPH Honduras, as well as a group of students from Notre Dame held a Benediction Ceremony to bless and officially open the building.
Diligence and collaboration pay off as first surgery is performed at our on-site surgery center.
Photo: American volunteers Tara Ashleman and Natalie Klinkenberger pose with Doctor Cerna after performing a series of minor surgeries in our newly operating on-site surgery center.
On Wednesday, March 26, 2008 the first surgery was performed in the septic surgical room of the NPH Surgical Center. With news of the sterile surgery center getting out, many local villagers are coming to the sterile facility for minor surgeries. Every Wednesday morning patients who need minor surgeries, such as mole and wart removal, are scheduled with the Honduran doctor, Dr. Cerna, with assistance from volunteers Tara Ashleman and mylself. Our volunteer optometrist, Christiane Hensel, has also been working out of a small room in the center, performing eye exams and improving the quality of sight for patients both from the external clinic and our children.