Last Sunday, I was in the capitol for the Super bowl. That morning, I didn’t have too much to do so I went to the intake of a med mission to see if I could help out.
Various doctor groups come to the DR from all over the US for 1-2 weeks to provide free health care. Most of the doctors only speak English so Peace Corps set up a system to allow volunteers to accompany the doctors as translators during the “med mission.”
Sunday was intake day of the cosmetic surgery mission in the capitol. People came in to give general information and schedule surgeries. Now let me make this clear, when I say cosmetic I don’t mean breast implants and gastric bi-pass surgery. We saw people with clef lips, deformed or extra fingers, fire or acid burns, extreme scarring, extra skin on ears.
I went to the med mission thinking that I would be taking people’s names and phone numbers, and/or crowd control duty. A friend and I traveled there and the closer we got the more it hit us that this was going to be a crazy day. There was a line of patients for two blocks to the hospital, and there was a loud crowd just outside the doors. We gripped hands squeezed are way to the front, and asked where they needed us.
We ended up taking people’s general information, but also working with a specific doctor to figure out what exactly happened to the patient. Then describing to the patient about the required surgery. Both the patients and the surgeries were widely ranged. A four month old with an extra finger and extra toe to a 35 year old with major burns on the side of his face down to his chest and elbow.
The person I’ll remember most was a 23 year old girl who came in with a horrible burn on the inside of her ankle. “Two years prior,” she told me. She took off her shoe, “a electrical cord from a fridge exploded and deformed my ankle.” Deformed was an understatement. It looked like her skin had become clay and someone had moved and kneaded the skin. More chunks in some places and so little in others so that you could see the white canvas (bone) peeking out from the background. Then the same person had flicked different colored paint…brown, red, black…on the mountainous clay.
The doctor gave me the worse news of the day…I had to tell the girl with abstract art for an ankle that there was nothing he could de for her. Over 600 people came to the hospital that day, and the doctors over the next two weeks have several hundred surgeries scheduled.
Even though I was there for about four hours, it was an experience I’ll never forget. Count you blessing today for health, for life.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
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