Every year, Operation Smile South Africa sponsors a mission
to Madagascar, and lucky for us work-starved Peace Corps volunteers, we get to
help out with the translating! Back in early June at the beginning of all the
strikes, I heard that Op Smile was coming and I essentially harassed my Peace
Corps boss until he relented and let me participate. Like I always say,
demanding things always pays off! A little bit about Operation Smile, it’s an
international NGO that sponsors missions in developing countries to operate on
and fix cleft lips and cleft palates for free. Doctors, nurses, dentists, child
life specialists, speech therapists and many others all donate their time,
skills, and resources to give this really amazing gift to children and adults
born with a cleft lip or cleft palate. Basically, it’s a really cool
organization that is doing good in the world. Publicized through radio,
television, posters, and word of mouth, over 260 families showed up for the
first day of screening. That was a crazy day! I really didn’t know what to
expect going into it, so day one was kind of madness. The Operation Smile Team
consisted of around 60 people, plus 20 Peace Corps volunteers, and a number of
other Malagasy translators. So a lot of people! The initial days consisted of
screening kids and adults with cleft lips and cleft palates on their candidacy
for surgery. Our job as translators involved working with the medical staff to
communicate to the patients exactly what was going on and to get the proper
medical history to assess the patient’s priority level for surgery. Each part
of the medical team had to assess every patient, so it took a long time. The
first two days were very long and very hectic, but still pretty awesome.
Families has come from near and far and waited upwards of 12 hours, just for
their chance to get a surgery for their child or brother or friend. Commitment.
 |
| waiting...... |
Surgery week was one of the coolest and most magical things
I’ve been privileged enough to be a part of, not only during my Peace Corps
service, but also during my life. 136 patients were chosen from the 260 or so
that were screened. The medical team operated on 30 patients a day for 4 days
and finished up the week with 16 on the final day. I tried to do a little bit
of everything, but spent the bulk of my time working in the Recovery Room and
the Post-Operation wards. The Recovery Room was pretty much exactly what it
sounds like: the place patients were brought to immediately post-surgery when
they were coming out of the anesthesia. So it involved explaining to patients
or parents what was happening: the surgery went well, there were no problems,
you need to drink juice and hydrate, you can’t touch your mouth or the
stitches, etc, etc. But the coolest part of that job was bringing in the
parents from the waiting room to see their kids post-operation. Culturally,
Malagasy people are not very expressive. They don’t hug, there are not public
displays of affection, and they don’t get overly excited. But in the Recovery
Rooms, moms cried with joy and cried with fear, some hugged every nurse,
doctor, and volunteer they could get their hands on, and for the first time in
the entire year that I’ve been here, they talked about their feelings. Moms no
older than me tried to hold in all the emotion that comes with having to sit by
and watch your baby get surgery, and watch him or her hurt, but not be able to
comfort them, while at the same time knowing that this surgery will change
their little life. Probably the most memorable conversation I had with a mother
on this topic happened on day three of surgery. As she watched her child get
led by the hand back to the Operating Room, she burst into tears. After a
little coaxing by myself and another volunteer, she started talking. She told
us how scared she was and how she can’t bear to watch her baby cry, but she
knows that this surgery means everything for her child and how wonderful of an
opportunity it is. She told us how the rest of her family disowned her and her
child because of his severe cleft lip, and they’ve been on their own since. She
said that they’ve been waiting for years for this chance, and even though she
knew she shouldn’t cry, she couldn’t help it. I definitely got choked up
listening to that story. But seeing that mother’s face when I brought her back
to see her child post-surgery was magical. Joy mixed with confusion mixed with
a desire to remain emotionless was splayed all across her tear-streaked face.
BOOM. Life changed.
 |
| A happy mom |
It was really cool to be that direct link between the medical
team and patient, because a lot of the cases started to feel personal to me.
Especially working in the Recovery Room and then the Post-Operation wards, I
got to follow patients all the way through their experience with Operation
Smile. From pre-surgery to recovery room to the post-operation wards and then
patient discharge, I got to see it all! I even was able to observe a procedure!
I followed this little guy all the way through, and look how beautiful he is!
The most amazing part of this experience was patient
discharge, when everyone got to go home. What a lot of people don’t realize
about cleft lips and cleft palates is that it’s not just cosmetic. Yes, there
absolutely is a huge cultural stigma against cleft lips and palates all across
the developing world. But, a patient with a cleft palate often can’t eat or
speak properly. Imagine missing a part or most of the roof of your mouth…that’s
a cleft palate. Now imagine trying to eat and talk and drink with that
deformity. Food and water comes out of your nose. You can’t pronounce certain
sounds and therefore words. Imagine trying to go to school and learn and
socialize. Now think about how amazing and life changing it is to get that
deformity fixed. BOOM. Operation Smile.
A patient with a cleft lip often can’t nurse properly. They
have teeth that seem to come out of their nose because of their cleft. They
can’t close their mouth. They can’t say certain sounds and therefore certain
words. How would you communicate? How would you learn, or get a job, or find a
husband or wife? Imagine a baby who gets his cleft lip fixed. He can nurse.
He’ll be able to speak. Often, you won’t even be able to notice the scar. BOOM.
Operation Smile. Now imagine an adult who has gone their entire life with a
cleft lip. Now they can annunciate properly. Now they can socialize, and date,
and get married without any cultural stigma. Now, when they look in the mirror,
they don’t even recognize who is looking back at them. BOOM. Life changed. I
assisted a nurse in discharging an adult patient on the last day of surgery.
The woman was 30 years old, unmarried, and lived with a friend. She had spent
the night in the hospital after her surgery, and was to be discharged the next
morning. Part of the discharge process is cleaning of the wound where the lip
was stitched up. A lot of times, blood and other dirty stuff collect on the
incision area. This woman in particular had had a decent amount of residual
bleeding that hadn’t been cleaned up yet. I explained to her what the nurse was
doing, and she sat perfectly still and stoic while her lip was cleaned. And
then we showed her a mirror. I couldn’t hold back my own tears watching this
adult woman look with disbelief at her own reflection. Cleaned up of all the
dried blood and such, there was a perfect little stitched up incision that was
already healing nicely. She couldn’t even believe what she was saying and just
kept repeating “Thank you, thank you, thank you” as she tried to control her
tears. BOOM. Life changed.
Working with Operation Smile was a pretty awesome
experience. The entire team is really committed and dedicated to what they’re
doing and they all work very cohesively together, despite their different
backgrounds. I feel very lucky to have been part of a project like this. I’m
headed back south to Fort Dauphin today and am looking forward to returning to
coastal life! Now that (hopefully) the strikes are over for good, my projects
will be starting back up. PHELT lives on! And happy back to school week for
everyone in the U.S., especially Ian who is starting his senior year. Wowzaaa.
 |
| Spreading positive vibes in the Post-Op Ward! |
If you’re interested in the Operation Smile program I
participated in, check out their website:
