Dreaming and working together was founded in approximately 2008 by a gentleman named Hernando Garcia. earlier. Hernando had been from Peru, but had been working at Hartford Hospital for 30 years in the medical records department, working in the medical records Department, he had abundant access to many doctors and other medical professionals. And it was there that he tapped into a few. He had set up little kiosks all over the hospital that would literally collect the five cent redemption tin can and using the proceeds from those tin cans, he first approached a neurosurgeon, Dr. Andy Wakefield, and said, hey, come down to my country. If you buy your plane ticket it up, what you up up, and feed you if you take care of my people for a week. And that was how the organization began. He had interests that were mainly through the doctors he worked with, a dentist, a plastic surgeon. And then along that time, Dr. Subumani Siarama, who was a friend of Dr. Wakefield's, said, hey, I'd like to join you on a trip and just see what happens and what goes on there. Unbeknownst to to Dr. Curama, you know, it would be sort of a life-changing event because he got to meet a counterpart physiatrist in Lima Peru named Dr. Dr. Mary Cuera Vu Soria. And they fostered a friendship the very next year, Dr. Cramama, again traveled with Dr. Wakefield, brought down a couple of therapists, and they had encountered a number of amputes that had needs that were not being met. At that time, my previous mentor, Al Matsunis, was working along with us up in Connecticut, and Dr. C. Thama invited him to come down. And from his very first trip, Al said, came back and said, Paul, you need to come to Peru and help me. uh My first trip was in 2012 and uh the organization really has grown from that point. largely through the rehab section of things. Alan and I very easily partnered with the University of Hartfordford. We would bring down two PT students and two MSPO students with us each time and expand the amount of services that we could provide. It was through our connection with Dr. Mary that the group was able to grow. She was really and continues to be the the key to how this all grows and manifests. Over the years, we would expand how we would treat things. our method of fabrication is a little bit different than what you would see in typical prosthetic fabrication. We direct mold most of our sockets with fiberglass, over silicone liners or thermoclastic liners from Alps. Alps has been very generous to us over the years, always giving us what we need, which which is nearly a pallet of liners every time we go down. Each year, we are there only to serve in one hospital a week. We work as an adjunct, a partner of the Daniel Alccedes National Carryon Hospital in Lima, Peru with them. And I would we would break up into rooms. I would take a room. I would take a room. He would take a student, I would take a student. But then eventually we grew and we were bringing down other prosthetes. And this was a nice, natural way for us to even grow our own healthcare network here at home. So we were bringing down therapists that we work with from Harartard Healthcare directly, These are the same patients therapists that I refer to my patients to now, and now they come down with us, and we see these patients that are the underserved of Peru. Somewhere right before COVID, Dr. Setam was able to get us a grant through Rotary International, which helped provide us some funding to accelerate some of our trips. We did two full trips and then two smaller trips where we would do some training, part of the part of the goal of the grant from rotary was that we needed to train some people down there. There are two prostatists that are really technicians. Fernando, Messias, and Victor Alvarez that have grown to be our technicians and our right hand when we're down there in Peru. And even though these guys speak non English and we speak very little Spanish, they are prostitous. They take care of our patients when we are not there. Fernando had been a longtime friend of Dr. Mary, and he had been a part of our mission trips down there all along, but we never really realized how impactful and how much a role role he played until we started working more directly with him. Today, because of our work there in Lima, there are a number of things that have continued to grow. The amputee network there and the rehab network from Caron Hospital has grown. Mary, when we used to go down initially, Mary would have one or two residents working with her. Today, if you go down, there are at least eight residents that are working directly with her. They work directly with her, and they seek out carry-on hospital because it's the one place where they can see amputee rehab care from start to finish in sort of a concise period of time. And this happens because of Victor and because of Fernando, Abby, because of dreaming and working together, being down there. The way they've run the clinic, as at the end of the rotary Grant. Granted, COVIID did throw a hiccup for us in the middle. We had about two years, 2020 and 2021 where we could not make trips down to Peru. It wasn't until the end of 2021. that Alan and I were able to go down again for a small trip in order to kickstart things off again. This was the second small trip for rotary, and then 2022 was the next time that we were able to have a large trip. Now, every other Saturday, there is a rehab clinic that runs in the morning at Caron Hospital and ametes go there and they get rehab, and Victor and Fernando will see up to three patients or three cases on a Saturday morning. These are Peruvians volunteering for Peruvians. They are working with the supplies that we have brought down. They are using the techniques that we've trained them to use, and they are seeing patients. And for the last two years that we've done these trips, the two Peruvians get a room. I get a room, another process gets a room and we we all work together. So we still do a large trip where we see a large number of patients this past spring we saw 60 patients. However, 20 of those were seen by Fernando and Victor. And then 20 were in one of our treatment rooms and 20 more were seen from another treatment room. It's obviously very rewarding to do outreach work like this. But one of the things, and I've done outreach work with the Hangar Foundation when they were in Haiti in 2010, as well as I went back to Haiti under MedI in 2014 and but the partnership that we've made with this group down there is unlike anything I've had in my life. And the way our organization works even here in the States is, I think, equally magical. The fact that we have really sort of created our own little health network. and relationships. You know, when I send patients to Harford hospitals and a T clinic, I can tell them, you're going to see my friend, Dr. Setarama, and he he's going to give you a prescription for what we need. And then we go to Peru. You're going to go see my friend, Dr. Siarama. Uh, It's, it's, it's a wonderful organization to be a part of, and it's something, even though the, the pathways of life take all of us in different directions at times. You know, our group has changed. People get married, people move away, people have children. They're at different points in their life. And so some of the figures in the group change, the group itself is still a pretty amazing group. It had already been mentioned that Dr. Wakefield, the neurosurgeon, was another part of this organization. This is sort of unrelated to prosthetic narotic work, but because he was one of the founders of the group, he's he's a partner with us. Over the last two years, he now brings he brought two neurosurgeons down last year. This year, he brought two neurosurgeons and a neur a resident.. And we also brought down another physiatrist and a physiatry resident. So continuing the whole education process there, we have a lot of different optortunities. The students that come down with us, whether they're PT students or PNO students are able to observe some neurosurgeries that are being done by American surgeons in Lima Peru Hospital. It's kind of crazy to think about it that way. At the same time, we are raining down another neurosurgeon who is doing some some unique research and partnering with the rehab facility there with Vegas nerve stimulation and treatment of strokes and other similar maladies. So there are a lot of branches of our vumian working tree that that make us up.
PDA