So did anyone do anything fun in February?
February seems to have commandeered a focal point in my annual calendar for the past twenty-seven years. 1985 I was chief resident in my plastic surgery training, six years after finishing medical school. I was ready to start on a new chapter in my training having been accepted to study craniofacial surgery in Paris in August. Life was good but I had no idea I was about to experience a landmark event that continues to give meaning, purpose and motivation to my life.
My program director had agreed to send the two chief residents and two of his clinical professors to the Dominican Republic for ten days to operate on the poor people with congenital deformities of the face and hands, as well as burn victims with horrible scar contractures. We joined forces with the Peace Corp to help our every move in that strange environment. We set up the equivalence of a MASH unit on a chicken ranch in the mountains near the Haitian border. We had no electricity or running water and shared our cots with tarantula’s and Kane spiders. The four of us performed 110 surgeries in four days that first year.
M.A.C.L.A., Medical Aid for Children of Latin America, was born. My good friend Dr. Tom Geraghty in Kansas City, MO built from that auspicious beginning a surgical charity that has treated over 10,000 patients. Tom and I have been going every year since, with the exception of my time in Paris studying craniofacial surgery followed by a fellowship in microvascular surgery. We now work out of Padre Belini Hospital in Santo Domingo, the capital. And we perform an average of 220 cases a year with back-to-back one week trips with separate teams.
Every year, in spite of the hundreds of surgeries I have performed there, one or two patients touch even the most seasoned of us. This year Tom and I shed a few tears over a beautiful 3 year old girl who pulled a scalding caldron of water onto her shoulder and chest. The other heart breaker was a 22 year old handsome boy riding his motorbike. The group that stole his bike threw a mixture of molasses and battery acid on the right side of his face. He lost vision in his right eye and is permanently disfigured with his mouth frozen open and his chin contracted down to his collar bone. My youngest son Vince is the same age as that young man.
Tom and I worked for hours through our tears on those two patients, releasing the little girls’ right arm that was frozen to her side and releasing the young mans frozen jaw from his collar bone, his frozen mouth so he could close it, and his frozen open eyelids so he could close them.
Neither one will ever be normal again, but at least we can give them some sort of functional improvement.
Twenty-seven years and counting. I can’t wait for February.
February seems to have commandeered a focal point in my annual calendar for the past twenty-seven years. 1985 I was chief resident in my plastic surgery training, six years after finishing medical school. I was ready to start on a new chapter in my training having been accepted to study craniofacial surgery in Paris in August. Life was good but I had no idea I was about to experience a landmark event that continues to give meaning, purpose and motivation to my life.
My program director had agreed to send the two chief residents and two of his clinical professors to the Dominican Republic for ten days to operate on the poor people with congenital deformities of the face and hands, as well as burn victims with horrible scar contractures. We joined forces with the Peace Corp to help our every move in that strange environment. We set up the equivalence of a MASH unit on a chicken ranch in the mountains near the Haitian border. We had no electricity or running water and shared our cots with tarantula’s and Kane spiders. The four of us performed 110 surgeries in four days that first year.
M.A.C.L.A., Medical Aid for Children of Latin America, was born. My good friend Dr. Tom Geraghty in Kansas City, MO built from that auspicious beginning a surgical charity that has treated over 10,000 patients. Tom and I have been going every year since, with the exception of my time in Paris studying craniofacial surgery followed by a fellowship in microvascular surgery. We now work out of Padre Belini Hospital in Santo Domingo, the capital. And we perform an average of 220 cases a year with back-to-back one week trips with separate teams.
Every year, in spite of the hundreds of surgeries I have performed there, one or two patients touch even the most seasoned of us. This year Tom and I shed a few tears over a beautiful 3 year old girl who pulled a scalding caldron of water onto her shoulder and chest. The other heart breaker was a 22 year old handsome boy riding his motorbike. The group that stole his bike threw a mixture of molasses and battery acid on the right side of his face. He lost vision in his right eye and is permanently disfigured with his mouth frozen open and his chin contracted down to his collar bone. My youngest son Vince is the same age as that young man.
Tom and I worked for hours through our tears on those two patients, releasing the little girls’ right arm that was frozen to her side and releasing the young mans frozen jaw from his collar bone, his frozen mouth so he could close it, and his frozen open eyelids so he could close them.
Neither one will ever be normal again, but at least we can give them some sort of functional improvement.
Twenty-seven years and counting. I can’t wait for February.