The Medical Advocacy Team: March 2008

Friday, March 28, 2008

Alfrelina has a Doctor!

Sweet baby Alfrelina has both a doctor and a hospital! Guess your prayers worked fast!
We were blessed to get call today from a wonderful Surgeon in Washington State who will be providing charity care for Alfrelina. He was able to talk to his hospital and "team" and get them all on board today as well. We feel especially grateful because he has a lot of experience doing surgical missions work internationally. What a great blessing for this sweet baby and her family.

In looking for care for her we also came across several other new contacts. One was a doctor that is willing to see adults for reconstructive plastic surgery charity care, another surgeon that is interested in possibly going to Haiti to do some work in country, and another surgical group interested in other plastic surgery cases outside of of cleft lip/palate.

So it has been a wonderful day, and even a great week of progress for the people we help and for the Medical Advocacy Team.
YEAH!!!
Thanks all!

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Mid week updates

Meet Alfrelina! A precious 11 week old from Haiti. While we are so grateful for Operation Smile and the Smile Train serving Haiti, they are unable to provide surgery for infants under 10 months. We have a couple of doctors reviewing baby Alfrelina's case and hope to have charity care arranged for her cleft and lip repair soon. She is currently being fed with a syringe and it would be best for her to get surgery soon so she can truly thrive! Thanks for keeping Alfrelina in your prayers. We will be looking for a sponsor church or families to help with fundraising for her travel, if you have any interest in helping, email us!

Please continue to keep Martine in your prayers. She is doing well and has amazing people caring for her in Haiti. We have a terrific doctor willing to provide life saving heart care for Martine. We are still waiting on word if the hospital will accept her case for charity care. We are hoping in the next few weeks to have everything arranged for her to get her Visa. Thanks for thinking of darling baby Martine.

Baby Dieunette (or Baby Di as we like to call her), had her Visa applied for yesterday and we are still waiting on news. Angel Missions Haiti will give us an update soon. Her wonderful host family from Omaha was able to meet Baby Di and her mother while they were in Haiti last week. What a blessing for her Mom that she was able to put a name and face to the people who will care for her sweet baby Di while she is in the states. Baby Di will be going to Omaha soon for an occipital encephlocele repair. We are so thankful for the great neurosurgeon who has donated his time, and the hospital who came forward to help baby Di! Thank you!!!

Please continue to pray for sweet Ruth Nallie. We have had some additional places/doctors interested in reviewing Nallie's case this week. She has a wonderful family and caretakers that are praying for her and hoping she can come to the US within the next couple weeks for life saving heart care. Please keep praying! We appreciate it so much!

Please continue to pray for Samuel in Ghana. The wonderful people in Ghana were able to take Samuel for a CT scan which was very helpful. We have a few people working on arranging care for him but still have yet to get a commitment from a hospital. We are hopeful that things will come together for Samuel soon and he will be able to get the life changing surgeries that he needs to correct his spine and back. Thanks for remembering to think of Samuel. Also if you have any interest in donating airmiles (on Delta) for his travel, please contact us! Thanks!

Sonel and Alex

Sonel and Alex were able to get their visa's approved yesterday in Haiti. The Visa's will be picked up this Friday and both boys will be traveling soon.

Praise! Thanks so much for the wonderful doctors and hospitals who came forward with open arms for both of these children. Thank you also to the wonderful host families who are so giving of their time and TLC!

Please keep the boys and their families in your prayers during the up coming weeks. We will be sure to update you on their progress!

Thanks so much.
M.A.T.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

A quick update:

Ruth-Nallie from Haiti - please pray for this sweet baby girl. RN is very sick and needs to come to the United States for care. She has several issues, but right now we're focusing on the fact that she has a heart defect and needs heart surgery. We're SEARCHING for a cardiothoracic surgeon and hospital willing to donate care to sweet Ruth-Nallie. Might you know someone that could help her?

Real Hope for Haiti has sent us information on several children. One of these kids is a darling little boy with a facial mass. He was evaluated by Operation Smile for surgery, but they weren't able to help him right now. We need to get a CT scan and see exactly what is going on - this will cost $300. If you are interested in donating towards this need, it would be very appreciated.

Smile Train, a cleft charity, will be in Haiti in early June 2008. If you know of someone in Haiti that needs cleft surgery - please get in contact with us and we'll help you out with the details. We are very excited by all the help that cleft patients in Haiti are getting.

Operation Smile did surgery on 64 patients while they were in Haiti! ALL of the patients our friend Lori (RHFH) sent for surgery were operated on! They did an amazing job and we are so grateful. They plan to return to Haiti in December 2008.

Here are some before and after pictures:

Monday, March 24, 2008

Shirts are Ready!

The t-shirts are printed and they are being shipped out this week. Let us know when you get yours and how you like it!

We'd love to see a picture of you and/or your child in your MAT t-shirt, so be sure to share them with us - you can email pictures to Salem at sis2kensia@yahoo.com or Sarah at sisters3designs@aol.com

We'll have more updates soon.

Thank you for your support!!!

The Medical Advocacy Team

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

T-shirts and more!

Here is an adorable picture of Helande and her Mom just last month in Haiti. Helande is doing great. She came for encephalocele (occipital) to Texas last summer. What a sweetie, and what an amazing family she has!

We have had five new children referred to us in the past couple days. We will be adding their information soon on the right hand side of the blog page.

We are still seeking host families, and will be ongoing. Kim, our host family coordinator, who is also hosting Alex, is on her way to Haiti right now with her husband Jeremiah. Please pray that Alex and Sonel (who is going to Indiana for club feet surgery), are able to get their Visa's next week. They will be leaving to come to the US shortly after that. Please also keep Kim and Jeremiah in your thoughts and prayers for safe travels.

Below is a list of the t-shirts that we have left for the fundraiser. Thank you everyone for your orders. Let's get the rest of these sold! Please pass on the blog link to all your friends and family. We are also not sure if we should order more, so try to help us by drumming up some more interest, let's get the word out now. :) Thanks so much! The M.A.T. Team

Kids
XS - 5

S - 5

M - 3

L - 3

Adult
S - 8

M - 8

L - 4

XL - 1

XX - 1

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

This and That

Hello Friends!

Our t-shirts are selling really well...we're all very excited about this. I think we've almost hit the point where we've paid off the shirts and now we can actually start raising some money. Yay!

We've had several people ask about international orders. From this point on I think we're going to have to charge a little bit more for the shirts if we're going to ship them internationally, I hate to do, but I don't see any other way. So we're going to ask for an additional $5 for all international orders from this point on. Hope that doesn't make anyone too mad! :)

We have found a hospital and doctor to repair little Dieunette's encephalocele. Everyone is still tying up a few loose ends with the proposed host family, getting the visa, etc. and then we hope to get her here for surgery!

We're still working on options for Samuel in Ghana and Gabriel in Guinea-Bissau. We have a strong lead on doctor for little Samuel, so we're all praying that the hospital will agree to provide him with charity care and he can get the care he needs soon.

We're still working on Gabriel. We have been in contact with an organization in Liberia that has a prosthetics program/clinic there. From what we've learned, the problem with bringing him to the United States for prosthetics is that as he grows, he will need new arms every year. This would be a lot of work and a lot of money to try to get him here every year - and I don't even know if we could find someone here willing to care for him indefinitely. So we're looking into some charities closer to Guinea-Bissau - unfortunately, I don't think there are any IN that country, but the neighboring countries may hold some options. He will still need his leg corrected by an orthopedic surgeon - so we will be looking into that soon as well.

We have echocardiograms for several of our kids with heart conditions out to a couple of doctors. Hopefully some of them will come through soon.

And last, but most certainly not least, I thought I would share a new picture of my gorgeous host baby, Schnider. Schnider is here from Haiti on a medical visa to have his bilateral cleft lip and palate corrected. He has his lip repair in November and will have his palate repair in May/June. Isn't he just the cutest?! The amazing Dr. B. did a wonderful job on his lip/nose. People are shocked when they see the before and after pictures of this handsome little guy!

Monday, March 10, 2008

Thanks to those of you that are buying t-shirts! We are very excited about them. We expect them to arrive in about 10 days - so they'll start getting shipped out then.

Again, tell your friends about them. The price of the shirt INCLUDES shipping - so they are very reasonable and are a really good quality, nice fitting shirt. :) We are really hoping to raise some money for the kids with this fundraiser.

The saying on the front of the shirt is (in Haitain Kreyol):

Men Anpil Chay Pa Lou (which means)
Many Hands Make the Load Lighter.

How great a saying is that?!

We'll send out an update on the kids we're helping soon.

The M.A.T. Team

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Typo

Hi everyone,

It was just pointed out that there is a typo on the graphic of the shirt below.

The shirts WILL have the correct spelling of "anpil".

We expect the shirts to take about 10 days and then we can start getting them out. They are going to be so cool! Tell your friends! :)

THANKS!

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Buy a Shirt!

Update May 14, 2008: We are almost out of t-shirts! We will be posting a list of what we have left soon, but in the meantime please email us before ordering to make sure we have the size you want. Thank you for your support!!!!

Order An Adult Shirt

Comes in Small, Medium, Large and XL

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Sweet Gilbert has passed away.

We just got the news that sweet baby Gilbert passed away.

Please pray for his family in Haiti, for his escort Mary, and for the staff at Children of the Promise that so diligently cared for him.

Gilbert Update 03/06

Baby Gilbert HAS a visa and should be in Miami by now! He is really struggling and there has even been talk of him not being able to make it all the way to Texas. Pray he can hold on a little bit longer - he is so close!

His escort (the wonderful Mary) is going to try to make it to Texas this evening and they will be met at the airport by an ambulance that will take them straight to the hospital. I will try to keep the blog updated and will let everyone know when this beautiful baby is finally in the hospital getting the care he so desperately needs.

Link To Us!

Hi friends,

On the right hand side of this page you will now see a some html code that allows you to put our button onto your blog or website! Pretty soon we're going to have some AWESOME t-shirts for sale here on the blog, so spread the word!

Thank you so much for your continued support.

The M.A.T. Team

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Update on Gilbert

Hi friends,

Gilbert, the baby from Haiti with spina bifida, is with his escort and should be in the United States by the end of the week! He is stable, but is still struggling. Please continue to pray for little Gilbert. We'll update everyone once we have news that he is in Texas and in the hospital getting the care he needs. Thanks for your continued concern for these precious children!

The M.A.T. Team

A Beautiful Baby Girl.

This beautiful little girl is Dieunette.

D. has an encephalocele on the back of her head. We are pretty close to having a hospital and doctor lined up for her in Omaha and are currently looking for a host family.

We'll keep everyone updated on this lovely little girl.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Operation Smile

Some of you may remember from my (Salem's) personal blog that we've been working to get surgery for some adults in Haiti with cleft lips and palates. One of these adults is my host sons (Schnider's) father. Last year we got in contact with Operation Smile and an exploratory team was sent to Haiti to evaluate the situation and decide whether they should send a full mission there. The exploratory team said they would be able to do some surgeris on a few adults. We sent some people over (one of them Schnider's father) but only one of our people were able to get surgery.

Long story short - Operation Smile is BACK in Haiti this week and they have a full team there. We have been in contact with them and the hospital there (Partners in Health) and will be sending a group of people over for surgery. We hope and pray that all of our people will be able to get surgery, but know that the group has limited time and they will have many more people there than they can provide surgery for. Above is a picture of the group that Lori (Real Hope for Haiti) sent over - the guy on the far right is Schnider's dad. I really hope he is able to get his lip corrected. He told us how he was never allowed to go to school and was constantly tormented because of his deformity. What a difference this will make in the lives of each of these people. I'm so excited! I will update everyone as I can. Lori said she'll try to send me after pictures when the surgeries are done. Pray it all goes well!