I left my heart…

…in San Francisco,

where the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) held their annual conference this year.

“How beautiful!” everyone back home told you.

But you probably spent most of your time here:

Never mind the early starts…

…we  had a great time!

But then, we had the best seat in the house – a beautiful booth alongside our friends at the ASA’s Global Humanitarian Outreach (GHO) committee:

With special shout out to the AAGBI’s Great Anaesthesia Bake:

A Lifebox trustee on the front page of the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2013 Daily News:

And a training workshop on how to implement safe surgical practice in a low-resource setting that inspired real conversation…

…so much conversation that we couldn’t get people to sit down again between sessions.

We found a good home at a hospital in Nigeria for some oximeters:

and a friend to help carry them there!

We felt like the sun was rising every time we saw this ad across the big screen…

and are enormously grateful to Teleflex, who gave a whole new purpose to trivia and presented us with this giant gameshow cheque.  It means real life change for surgical patients and providers in low-resource settings.

(And comes it its own giant gameshow cheque box.)

It felt good to work with the ASA as friends and allies for safer surgery, with our upcoming projects in Nicaragua and Guatemala, and the announcement of the First Annual National Lifebox Challenge led by the Residents Component.

So even though we had to go home, we took the ASA’s advice –

– and told you all about it!

It really was pretty.