BEYOND BORDERS
Ear Keloids from Ear Piercing Bilateral Cleft Lip and Palate
HAITI
The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was not truly a medical mission . It was more an act of emergency volunteerism . I found an organization called Airline Ambassadors and we were put on a military plane and taken to Port Au Prince to a hospital . We worked hard treating the injured two days after the earthquake , for seven days . It was quite a different kind of trip . We walked a mile up a hill past building ruins with body parts hanging out of the rubble , to a dormitory to sleep . We ate at vendors on the street , and we worked with substandard equipment and supplies . Nevertheless , we did some amazing work for the sick and injured people .
CAMBODIA
Next was Cambodia at the invitation of a Dutch-trained Cambodian surgeon , with whom we exchanged knowledge and stories over a 10-day mission . We performed surgeries together at a large military hospital in Phnom Penh , focusing on different techniques of cleft repair . One of the benefits of going to Cambodia was visiting Ankur Wat , a series of Hindu and Buddhist temples located at the northern border of Cambodia with India . One of our own , Dr . William Housworth , an emergency room physician at Audubon Hospital , was so taken with the area and the need , that he ultimately moved his family and manages a children ’ s hospital there . At subsequent visits , we did a lot of classroom teaching . Our plastic surgery colleagues started an organization called Smile Cambodia which repairs thousands of clefts all over the country and adjacent countries . They welcome all sorts of medical help to Phnom Penh .
MALAWI
Malawi is a small sliver of land south of Kenya to which we were invited . The first patient came into the clinic pushing a wheel-barrel in front of her with a watermelon sized mass in it , attached to her neck – it was a goiter . Malawi is inland , and all salt in the country is mined , it is not iodinated as is ocean salt . The government does not require iodine to be added to commercial salt , but a thyroid gland needs iodine . All the operations we did there were massive goiter excisions .
KENYA
In 2017 I joined a 23-member team , consisting of nurses , pharmacists , surgeons , anesthetists and technicians , most from Kentucky , with some University of Louisville residents in training . We went to a small town in Kenya with an organization called KenyaRelief . org . I went six times to a very well-organized mission which included a safari each time . We saw hundreds of patients and operated or otherwise treated hundreds , everything from cleft repairs , giant neck tumors , skin cancers and reconstructions all over the body . The patients would often walk with their families along the highway for days to see us . I believe that everybody on the missions would agree that they were fulfilled and very proud of what they had done . These events were truly life changing for the patients and for us . It is quite difficult to describe these missions . We were picked up at the airport in Nairobi and taken on an eight-hour drive to Migori , passing through miles and miles of poverty . The medical mission clinic that we attended also had an orphanage and a school for children . The children that we cared for were amazing and very appreciative , as were their parents . KenyaRelief . org has several twoweek missions per year composed of different specialties .
SOS has helped us with supplies for Kenya , as they have helped with so many other medical missions .
In 2022 , three of us went to another town in Northern Kenya called Kijabi . The hospital there had residency training programs where we gave lectures and helped with surgeries . ( continued on page 16 )
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