DANVILLE —
Medical team members from Geisinger Medical Center smiled from ear to ear as they worked to enable 11 Chinese babies with cleft lips or cleft palates to do the same.
The Valley group of 12 also got to set up the operating room in the new Maria's Big House of Hope in Luoyang, China.
Equipped to provide medical care to special-needs orphans, the facility is named for Maria, the youngest adopted Chinese child of Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman and Mary Beth Chapman, of Franklin, Tenn.
Maria died in a car accident in the United States.
The Chapmans, who formed the worldwide organization Show Hope, have two other children adopted from China.
"It was fantastic and much more than expected in the sense of doing something for a child who would not have been helped otherwise," said Dr. Joseph DeSantis, section head of pediatric plastic surgery and director of Geisinger's Cleft Palate Program.
The surgeries will help improve the chances of the children being adopted, said Amanda McElroy, pediatric intensive care unit registered nurse.
Also making the trip was Jennifer Koehler, physician assistant who works with DeSantis.
The trip started with Scott Hasenbalg, of Danville, chairman of Show Hope, a nonprofit organization mobilizing people and communities to care for orphans and provide them with families by giving grants for adoptions. It was established in 2003 by the Chapmans so more children could be adopted.
Hasenbalg asked Geisinger emergency room physician Dr. Erica McElroy (no relation to Amanda) if she would be interested in putting a team together to travel to China to help orphans.
Dr. McElroy organized a group to work in the operating room that had never been used in the facility, which opened a year ago.
The team members traveled at their own expense with some donations received from various places and the facility, a 75-minute plane ride from Beijing, providing members with a place to stay and food. Show Hope helped out with some expenses, said DeSantis.
The Geisinger medical personnel used vacation time for the trip.
Others going in addition to Dr. McElroy from Geisinger were pediatrician Dr. Edward Fannon, pediatric resident Ashley Green, anesthesiologist Dr. Xianren Wu, pediatric intensive care nurses Tara Dulac and Rob Lepper, operating room nurse Deb Strausser and pharmacists Amanda and Paul Green.
The medical orphanage has a Chinese doctor full time, along with an American nurse and another doctor overseeing the medical care of the children. The six-story building has a capacity of 125 children who can come there from all over China.
While there were 34 children needing surgeries to correct cleft lip or palate, there was only time for 11 surgeries. The boys and girls were chosen by orphanage personnel with surgeries done on children ranging from 4 months to 22 months. In the United States, the average age for this type of surgery is 9 to 12 months.
The Geisinger team took along supplies, some which were borrowed from Geisinger.
"We started with an empty set of rooms and turned it into an OR," Amanda McElroy said.
"The kids did great. We got several e-mails about how they are doing. One was actually adopted," DeSantis said of a child chosen by a Florida woman who sent a letter thanking them for the surgery and how much it meant to her.
Cleft palate and lip are more common in Asians and it is more common to have children put up for adoption in China, DeSantis said.
"Chinese doctors are good at repairing them but there are too many kids," he said of the procedures.
"It was an amazing opportunity for myself and the other PIC nurses to take our skills we have acquired at Geisinger and apply them to kids who otherwise would not have the opportunity for a forever home. We also were able to take our skills and teach other nurses," Amanda McElroy said of four Filipino nurses at the clinic. "It was a wonderful across borders and the children were just unbelievable," she said.
"Everyone was so appreciative," Koehler said.
The surgeries were scheduled from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with other Geisinger medical personnel staying up all night making sure the kids were OK. Strausser got up at 3 a.m. to sterilize instruments in a more primitive setting than they were used to.
"Everyone worked perfectly as a team — it was like we had worked together all the time," said Koehler, a five-year Geisinger employee.
Two Chinese plastic surgeons came to observe the surgeries. They invited the U.S. team to visit their hospital, in the city of 7 million, which they did.
With only 15 foreigners in that city, the Geisinger group stood out. "People were taking pictures of us," Koehler said. "The cultural experience was priceless," said Amanda McElroy, who has worked at Geisinger five years.
DeSantis said the trip showed him how much we take health care for granted in this country. Chinese hospitals are crowded, dingy and not air-conditioned, he said.
"It made us much more thankful when we returned" July 3, Amanda McElroy said.
The group arrived in China June 25.
While they were there, the Chapmans and their two adopted Chinese children visited.
"He gave us a concert," DeSantis said. "He's great guy."
Chapman is a very humble man who made coffee for them in the morning and thanked them for coming to China, Amanda McElroy said.
"He was very interested in the surgeries were we doing," Koehler said.
The Geisinger team hopes to return to help more children in May.
