International headaches

I volunteer and consult with an international medical group. Recently, we've had a couple of teenagers here for surgeries--both facial. One from Columbia--she was severely burned in a house fire at about a year old and is now 16. Our government gave us heck on getting her here-she has relatives here, she knows how to speak English, she LIKES it here, and we have ENOUGH Columbians here, thank you very much. What they don't realize is, she has a boyfriend there that she adores, family that she's close to, and a life that she doesn't want to leave. Visiting here is great, but she's not interested in a full-time residency.

The other kid is a totally different story--she's from Ghana. Daddy is a pentecostal minister, mom is a full-time mom, she's the only natural child, but they've taken in 4 others--which happens a lot in Africa these days. Total family support is about $150/month. Comparatively, they're middle-class. Then about age 6, she develops a mass above her right eye. Slowly it grows and pushes that eye out and down as it destroys the bone beneath and behind it. But she retains some of the eyesight.

An eye doctor gets behind the case and starts pushing her church officials to find help at an international level. That's where we got involved. The surgery has been done--the tumor is gone. She can still see. They had to fabricate a new piece of skull for that part of her face. We're still working on the plastic surgery part. She'll never look quite right--but she looks far better than she did, and, hey, that stinking tumor would have killed her in not too much more time. We feel blessed now. It took 22 hours of surgery to get it out.

So what's the headaches? I'm herding cats. The eye doctor from Ghana is coming into Atlanta and he wants to meet the surgical team--who has two separate offices which aren't anywhere NEAR the airport or each other, the mother and daughter are dying to see him, AND the eye doctor wants to talk to me about the organization coming to Ghana to work. All in 6 hours. In Atlanta's notorious downtown traffic. This is going to be a riot. I'm not sure they make enough ibuprofen.

The good things? I get to meet all kinds of really neat, interesting people who are having an impact on world health--and who aren't just sitting on their asses bitching and moaning. It's exciting. I have the opportunity to learn about other cultures and see other places in the world that other people haven't even thought about--much less wanted to go see. I participate in making the lives of these kids really demonstrably BETTER so they can live healthier lives. I cooperatively work with some of the very best in healthcare in this country who do this because of their love of humanity and faith in their Maker is like mine. Nobody works for money--we do it for the joy. It's the biggest rush there is.