Giving Kids a Smile Like Yours In Colombia

The life of our patients and any cleft lip palate patient in general is full of obstacules and life changing moments along their life and treatments. Its not easy to explain to a kid why he is different and why he wasn´t born equal to their fellow classmates, siblings or kids in general. 

The majority of patients in FISULAB arrive to the foundation being kids, and we are prepared to treat them from every aspect we traet (phsycology, speech therapy, surgery, genetics, social work, etc.) but we need to be able to treat kids as kids and teach them and instruct them in a way they understand. 

Thats why we partner with Waira (a group of young entrepreneurs) to come up with a set of activities in order to reenforce social skills and selfcare through games and playfull activities like "human pacman", "form A to B", "hanging bridge",among others,   that represent all the obstacules they have to overcome through life and how to deal with them.

The whole day was a complete success with an emotional outcome for both kids and parents reuniting them around a condition thay have been able to turn into a reason to create comunnity. Thak you Waira and our beautiful community of FISULAB, for that amazing and touching experience.

We always talk about our integral treatment and is not always easy to understand that our reach goes further than just a surgery. The clearest way to understand what we do to rehabilitate our patients is taking a look at those how have been with us for a long time, some of them have even completed the whole treatment in FISULAB. The most important aspect that we notice when someone has an integral trearment its his/her confident in theirselves and the way they communicate with others.

One of the most impressive success cases in FISULAB is Juan. 
Juan not only is a professional table tennis player, he also studies communication and is a professional singer. This abbilities, professions or skills are not only a huge challenge for people in normal health conditions; now imagine what this can mean for someone with speech discapacities.

Juan came by for a visit to FISULAB, a while after finishing his treatment and took the opportunity to give some advice for those with the same condition.

"The most important advoce I have for anyone who is going through the treatment is never to give up, they have to be constant and be patient too, because this is not something that you do from one day to the next, it actually takes a long time. In my case it was harder because i had to adapt my voice to the vocal technics in order to become a singer, another advoce I have for the new patients is to dedicate some time to the the human sciense or dedicate yourselfs to some sport, both of them help you improve your self esteem. Always rely yourselfs to your parents, because they are your engine in order for the treatment to work, in my case I owe everything to my parents because they never gave up on me. My words are for both patients and families for them to have consistency and to realize that the only discapacity are in the mind and in the limits you set to your self".

We would like to thank Juan for his kind words and his pleasent visit.