Sweet 16

Buenos Dias Friends and Family! It’s a great day to have a great day! Surgery day 2 is a go! Yesterday afternoon/last night ended around 9:30. We burn the midnight oil here at Kids First. Yesterday went off without a hitch thanks to our team, volunteers, patients, and translators. We were also delivered a KF favorite at the hospital for lunch…Pollo Feliz!! Our personal Pollo Feliz liaison, Billy Rolfe, was the most excited. The screaming/crying in the PACU yesterday was lower than normal so maybe Kids First has built up some good karma (doubtful). We had some colorful spica casts leave the OR yesterday thanks to casting material Dr. Mayer brought. We had a tie dye and our first pink camo patients leave. We like to think of ourselves as fashion forward.

The lucky number seems to be 16 around here. Yesterday we operated on 16 kids and today we again have 16 patients signed up. Team Mayer/Fitch is currently working on open reduction/femoral shortening/derotation. Mencio is working on a proximal humerus enchondroma and Stutz just completed a bilateral HSR. Today and tomorrow will be two of our longest days, so send good mojo to the team from wherever you may be (and caffeine, send caffeine).

This year we are doing team spotlights again to highlight the people who make life happen here. Today we are highlighting our surgeons! Drs. Stutz, Fitch, Mayer, Andrews, and Mencio are our main surgeons. We also have Dr. Mencio 2.0 (Marissa) and Dr. Stone who both wear a multitude of hats around here. These people are the glue of our team. Without them, we would have no surgery. They come from Colorado, North Carolina, Tennessee, D.C. and Texas to give their time and talent to these kids. Thank you for all that you do for us!!

That’s all we have for this morning! We hope your morning is off to as great a start as ours!

**PSA: we are having trouble uploading pictures from the wifi at the hospital, so we will upload pictures tonight! Go to our twitter (@KidsFirstOrtho) or our Facebook page (Kids First Orthopaedics) to see pictures we post throughout the day.