I will never forget Carlos. A number of years ago I fortunate enough to participate in medical missions to South America, namely Bolivia and Peru. As a non medical volunteer, my responsibilities included making sure the team had enough supplies, arranging meals, sterilizing instruments in the operating room and helping with registration for potential patients. The main focus of the trip was to provide free corrective surgery to people with Cleft lip and Cleft Pallet. Opening clinic day was also evaluation day and in Santa Cruz, Bolivia about 500 showed up with every possible affliction and aliment you can imagine. The process was straight forward. After seeing the Doctor the chart was given a colored dot. A green dot meant the person would be getting surgery, a blue dot was maybe and a red dot was no. After an exhausting 12 hour day, the last person to be seen was Carlos. He was a quiet and humble man that sat patiently in the waiting room all day. He had some sort of bacterial skin infection and his entire skin looked like that of a burn victim even under his finger nails. The doctors had no idea what it was. The bacteria was eating away at his skin and it dissolved his eye lids. Unable to close his eyes, he was not only unable to sleep but was going blind. His chart got a red dot. I was beside myself and started advocating for him with the medical team. I was told this was outside of the scope of what we were here for and nothing could be done. I confided in one of the Doctors, Jan Johnson and vented my frustration. After going back and forth over how to help this guy she told me she had an idea that might work. If I can convince one of the anesthesiologists and an RN to stay after the 14 hour clinic she would help him. Jan would take a skin graft from his abdomen and sew on new eye lids. Getting the other medical people to stay was the easy part. The problem was the lack of good donor skin available but she was willing to try. On the very last day of the clinic and before we packed up and went to the airport, Carlos came back to have his stitches removed. His eye lids where literally sewn shut. The entire team of 30 crowded into a room to see if the surgery was successful. As Dr. Johnson was removing the stitches she asked the interpreter to tell him to stop moving his eye lids so she could finish taking the stitches out. The surgery was a success! That day changed me in a very meaningful and profound way. It taught me to never lose hope and to never give up. It showed me that persistence and conviction with an end goal in mind will produce life changing results. I learned to be grateful in all circumstances and that my life with its bump bruises is blessed beyond my wildest imagination. It has given me clarity as to what is possible despite my current circumstances and that the person I am inside is not the person that others on the outside may see or understand. I will never forget Carlos.
