Blog

As I lay here in my bed struggling with the side effects of 7 vaccinations necessary to make this trip to Uganda, familiar thoughts and emotions surface…why am I doing this? I really should not be gone from work right now. I shouldn’t spend this much money!  The self doubt and questioning of my sanity usually strikes half way through the trip, when we have a difficult case, almost lose a patient or really struggle with the environment to the point of well, even danger.

And then…we see the miracles start to happen.  Patients who “see” their grandchild for the very first time.  The patient with a tumor so far advanced we didn’t think she would survive the surgery and yet she recovers long enough to have several more years with her family.  The child who came to us in Vietnam with an enlarged eye because we were an ophthalmology team there to do cataract surgeries.  Unfortunately this child had a brain tumor causing the eye deformity…oh, but wait. We just happened to have a neurosurgeon joining the team a week later.  She survived the surgery with a full recovery. 

The rich exchange with the medical communities who host us, the language of “surgery” transcends all other communication barriers and we experience first hand how 90% of communication is nonverbal.  As I write this blog the memories come flooding back of all the sweet relationships developed with team members from all over the world and the patients whose lives are changed because of a surgery performed.

I never go on these trips lightly, but with fear and trepidation, praying…God please give us wisdom and healing in our hands, above all…let us do no harm.

Janet

It started in 2006 when Janet Stookey a fellow OR nurse, invited me (or maybe I invited myself) along on an Indonesian surgical trip she was organizing. On arrival there was an elderly lady, I think was expecting to die from a ruptured appendix, as the surgeon there had died two weeks earlier from rabies. We hurriedly unpacked what we needed, removed her appendix and I was hooked. The years passed and I longed to do more international surgical work so I organized a dental trip, and then another surgical trip to Indonesia. All of these trips were made with the aid of International Friends of Compassion, http://www.ifcus.org/.

The next step in my journey came when I had the good fortune to get introduced to Dr. Joseph Clawson http://www.jpclawsonmedicalmissionsfoundation.org/. I was lucky enough to travel with and assist him doing cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries. From the Philippines to Zambia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I was able to travel to up to three countries a year with him. I was touched by the impact we were able to have in improving life for so many people.

My heart soars each time I think of the joy on the faces of parents and siblings seeing their loved one for the first time after corrective surgery. I remember the excitement in the voice of the five year old waking up from anesthesia after a cleft lip repair turning to her grandmother and saying, “NOW I can go to school”.   There was a father with a huge smile and tears in his eyes, seeing his 21-year-old son after he had his cleft lip and cleft palate repair and saying, “now HE can marry”. The stories are many, the emotions deep, the joy indescribable. I feel I’m the lucky one to be able to be a part of these surgical trips.

So, Uganda…Last April after a week of cleft lip and cleft palate repairs in the Congo, I allowed myself three days in Rwanda to see the silverback gorillas. I had a driver, Enos for those three days. He was interested in what had brought me to Africa and I shared some before and after photos of the patients we had just treated in the Congo. He wondered out loud why there were no cleft lips in his country, Uganda. I assured him they were there, as cleft lips/palates occur anywhere from 1 in every 500-700 births but because people do not have the opportunity for repairs, they hide from the public eye. Before dropping me off at the airport, Enos asked if I would come to his country and help his people. Who could say no? So I told him what it would take to get a team there, like a doctor to sponsor us, a hospital that would let us use their operating room, housing, transportation etc. I told him if he was willing to do some ground work in his country, I’d do what I could to bring a team there. And now, in just a few short weeks, we will be in Uganda.