From PACU to Migori, Kenya: How an ABPANC Grant Sent Me to Kenya Relief

By Shay Glevy, RN, BSN, CPAN, CAPA
Photo gallery below.

Kenya Relief, Migori | September 2–13, 2026

I spent twelve days in Migori, Kenya, as a registered nurse with Kenya Relief—most of them in recovery after surgery, and the rest living among the children at an orphanage called, Brittney’s Home of Grace. I was there because ABPANC believed perianesthesia nursing belongs on a medical mission, not only in our PACU’s at home. I believe in this mission as well and found myself there for the fifth time, serving with an all-women’s team!

ABPANC’s Medical Mission Grant is a one-time award of $3,000 for CPAN and CAPA certified nurses serving in a perianesthesia role. It covers travel. It does not cover the feeling of watching a patient wake up after a surgery they have waited years to receive. That part you have to go get yourself!

The campus

Kenya Relief is a 60-acre compound in Suna Migori: a children’s home, a school, and Brase Clinic. The clinic is staffed year-round by Kenyan clinicians and strengthened by visiting teams—surgeons, anesthesia providers, OR nurses, and preop/PACU nurses—who rotate through more than twenty times a year. Families travel hours for care that, in the United States, would be scheduled and discharged before lunch.

We flew into Nairobi at night, slept near the airport, and drove west for 10 hours the next day. By the time the van rolled through the gate, the work had already started in my head: airway management, pain management, minimizing nausea and vomiting, wound healing, patient and family education and to bless those that I encounter and pray that I can make a difference!

Recovery is the assignment

I am a nurse. My lane was the hours after the last stitch—PACU when the cases came out, rounding when the observation unit filled, and the assessments that keep a good operation from becoming a hard night.

The cases were the ones rural patients live with for years: thyroid and goiter work, ENT procedures for adults and pediatrics. The room is not an American PACU. You adapt the same standards to different equipment, different language, and a family that may have walked a long way and needs to walk home again. Kenyan nurses already knew the patients. I brought another set of eyes for emergence, pain control, and the first signs that something was not right. That is the work ABPANC funds when it sends a certified perianesthesia nurse.

Staying in the home

I stayed at Brittney’s Home of Grace, the children’s home that holds roughly 170 children and young adults across campus housing, kinship care, boarding school, and university support. Mornings were uniforms and tea. Evenings were homework, soccer, and the ordinary noise of a household that has decided these children will not be leftover. We had the rare afternoons of free time to play and be apart of this amazing organization. Playing games, water balloon fights, coloring and laughing with the children made for a blessing all in itself.

What I brought home

I did not fix Migori’s specialist shortage. I helped a team move patients safely through the most fragile hours after surgery, and I slept in a home full of children who make that work worth the jet lag.

If you want to help from here: sponsor a child, support Brase Clinic, or apply for the next ABPANC Medical Mission Grant. If you go, go for expecting to bless others, but you will find you leave with many more blessings!

What the grant made possible

A Kenya Relief trip is not free. Teams remit a program cost to the organization and pay their own airfare to Nairobi. The ABPANC Medical Mission Grant closed that gap for me. It meant I could take the time, buy the ticket, and show up in a clinical role and help others.

I am grateful to ABPANC for treating perianesthesia nursing as mission-critical. Two of these grants are awarded each year. If you are CPAN or CAPA and have been waiting for a reason to go, this is one. Learn More about ABPANC Grants.