After a 15-hour flight from Chicago to Beijing, I was able to uneventfully pass through China customs. As expected they wanted to know why I had: surgical instruments for cleft lip, palate and rhinoplasty operations, a full size suction machine, canister and tubing, ValleyLab electrocautery with 50 hand pieces, 60 pairs of sterile surgical gloves, shoe and head covers, facemasks, electrical transformers, power strips, and adapter plugs, digital still image and video equipment, headlight and light source, tool kit, etc. etc. etc. I spent more than an hour convincing the rather thorough customs agents that I wasn’t going to sell any of it, and that it would only be used in the surgical care of children with cleft lip and palate. In instances like this, I carry a file folder of pre and postoperative images along with my medical credentials. All it usually takes is a brief presentation of the purpose of our mission and the display of the images. It’s a universal response – the understanding of how one operation can dramatically improve a child’s life.

I’m waived through and place my three footlockers of equipment back on trolley cart, each weighing 65 pounds. Once outside the gate I look for a taxi to head over to our rendezvous point. No sooner after I pass the guarded checkpoint am I inundated with those all too familiar shady offers of “taxi? taxi?”. Fortunately, I see through the crowd our coordinator Walter Wong – the “can do” guy who always seems to make things happen. Not surprisingly, Walter already has transportation arranged and we load the trunks. The mission gets underway.

Preparing for a mission like this, one where the team literally brings most all of the supplies (except for IV fluids and other heavy disposables), never feels like it is ever going to get off the ground or that you’ll ever be leaving anytime soon with everything preplanning accomplished. With so many people involved doing so many differing things, you can easily go insane worrying about covering every little detail. Especially when those little details ensure the children’s safety and success of the mission. Somehow however, it gets done, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Tim Marten and the San Francisco team.

The team finally convened in at The Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University, ,Shijiazhuang Heibei, after a 5 hours bus ride from Beijing. It’s an intense, brief and welcoming reunion and despite the jet lag and time zone difference (for those of us from Chicago it’s nearly 12 hours difference) we check into the hotel after a brief dinner begin the preliminary team assignments,

If it’s one thing I’ve learned from missions like this, is that every team member is here because they want to be. For most , it’s a tremendous personal and financial sacrifice to be away from family and professional practice. The overall spirit of cooperation is exceptional. While on the mission, team members will roll up their sleeves and take on any additional tasks just to make things run smoothly. I’ve never worked with such a great group of people covering all facets of medical care – administrative, and (especially!) nursing (ward and recovery) and scrub/circulating personnel, and co-surgeons, etc. What’s more, it’s an interesting multinational group comprised of Australians, New Zealanders, Chinese nationals and Americans. The great reward our team members receive is knowing we’ve provided one of the most priceless gifts that come from helping those less fortunate. The value of providing cleft lip and palate service is inestimable, and resonates over time. For many of us, it recharges those original feelings of why we’ve chosen medicine as our lifelong career.

Today was our first day in the operating room, and we performed around 12 cases, all with great success. Not bad for a first day, and as we “get the rhythm down”, our productivity will improve all under the focus of paramount patient safety.

Well, with that brief overview more will be posted tomorrow on some of the interesting cases and observations, about the great interaction with our new Chinese physician colleagues of the University Hospital. Thanks again for visiting the site!

Best-

Howard S. Kotler, M.D., FACS