The Bere Train
Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Choo-choo! What train is that?
Oh it’s the smile train.
What? Wait, there’s no train in Bere. There’s not even a paved road!
We had a lot of reasons to smile in the month of November. We were also very busy. Hence the delay in writing many of the following blogs. A big part of both being busy and having reason to smile was our SMILE TRAIN!
Was that start too cheesy?
SMILE TRAIN is an organization that helps fund repairs of cleft lips and palates all over the world. We were lucky enough to be a recipient of their special generosity this year.
Probably one of the biggest hurdles (well, we had bigger hurdles, believe me) was figuring out what to write on the welcome sign that translates Smile Train into french. THERE ARE NO TRAINS IN CHAD! So we went with ‘station’ instead, kind of like a bus stop. The sign read, “Bienvenu à la gare de sourire.”
Introductions to our Smile Train team.
Aubrey, an ED doctor from Arizona here to help with the flow of patients just prior to the Smile Train’s arrival. She helped with rounds, delivered babies, and assisted in surgery also. She took the initial pre-op history and physical on many of the patients. Thus, she knew the patients’ names and histories better than most of us.
The anesthesia team. Dr. Ian from North Carolina, a professor in CRNA school with his two anesthesia students, Jenny and Ben. Ian is a friend of our old BFF, Mason. They work together in America, and Ian is one of the few people in the world who can put up with him. We are the other two people in the world (well, Kim... and Grace and Emmie... and everybody else who’s ever met him, everybody loves Mason McD). Ian gained notoriety when he calmly slipped in a completely blind nasotracheal tube after an old lady’s airway filled with blood from a bleeding oral mass during attempt McGrath intubation.
Bill and Laura Rhodes. Missionaries in Kenya for over 20 years. Laura is the surgical assistant and organizer of many of their Smile Trains. Bill is just the guy that does all of the surgeries. No big deal. You have a 3 kg bony tumor on the side of your head. Sure, let’s take it out. Piece of cake. He’s a plastic surgeon with a love for head and neck tumors. Or pretty much anything that anyone else can’t do, send it to Bill.
Together, this visiting team made miracles happen in Bere.
It’s impossible to tell all of the stories of patients that were helped. It was sure something special to be a part of the SMILE TRAIN this year in Bere. The first annual SMILE TRAIN! We were able to see the twinkle in the eyes of the healed cleft lips. (They weren’t able to smile well yet because they were post-op and not supposed to be moving their sutured and derma- bonded lip).
Cleft lips and palates are a malformation that these patients are born with. It’s no one’s fault. Yet the whole world looks at them as if they are a freak. In America, these patients would have undergone surgery early on. But two of our patients this year were adults, having lived their whole life being gawked and stared at.
The sparkle in their eyes when they looked into the iPhone on selfie mode and no longer saw a deformed lip. They saw a normal boy or girl. Just like everyone else. Priceless.
The first group was here for almost two weeks. There was so much work for a specialist such as Dr. Bill that we asked him to stay for another week. He said he would if we could find another anesthesia team as the first group already had tickets back to America.
Wait. What? Serious? You’ll seriously stay? I don’t think Bill thought we could pull it off. He thought that was a safe bet for sure. This is the morning of November 13.
Olen was on the phone immediately. ‘Hey, so I know it’s November 13 and all, but can you fly out in four days to come to Chad on your vacation time over Thanksgiving and work like a dog for free?’
We found a guy in TN who had done anesthesia school (just for you Geach). I went to Southern with Jonathan and Belen way back when. Then I followed them out to medical school at Loma Linda. Dr. Geach agreed to come with the other Dr Geach for the week of Thanksgiving at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. And faster than you can baste a turkey, we were into our 3rd week of speciality surgeries. More head and neck tumors. Thyroids, masses, and more clefts. And everything else under the sun.
Three weeks of starts anywhere between 5am and 6am every morning and going as late as 7pm to 10pm every. single. night. We worked HARD. God was good to us, however, and blessed us with miraculously few emergency cases to do during those three weeks, although there were some.
Here are some before and after pictures. There were 13 cleft lips and 2 cleft palates. And so many other crazy surgeries from the brain and hands of Dr Bill.
(At some point, and we will make it at this point, we should mention what amazing people Bill and Laura are. They are the most encouraging and positive and uplifting people we have ever met. And low-maintenance! We spoiled them with electricity and running water! They have raised four children in Africa, all of whom have grown up to be wonderful family-oriented Christians contributing to society. They take probably close to a dozen trips to various mission hospitals every year, which must be exhausting, but they still seem so energetic! The night before they left, they invited us in and talked to us for a very long time, encouraging us, hearing our visions, making us dream even bigger and possibly convincing us to commit to Bere even longer than we had previously imagined. You never know...)
Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Chug-a chug-a. Choo-choo! What train is that?
Oh it’s the smile train.
What? Wait, there’s no train in Bere. There’s not even a paved road!
We had a lot of reasons to smile in the month of November. We were also very busy. Hence the delay in writing many of the following blogs. A big part of both being busy and having reason to smile was our SMILE TRAIN!
Was that start too cheesy?
SMILE TRAIN is an organization that helps fund repairs of cleft lips and palates all over the world. We were lucky enough to be a recipient of their special generosity this year.
Probably one of the biggest hurdles (well, we had bigger hurdles, believe me) was figuring out what to write on the welcome sign that translates Smile Train into french. THERE ARE NO TRAINS IN CHAD! So we went with ‘station’ instead, kind of like a bus stop. The sign read, “Bienvenu à la gare de sourire.”
Introductions to our Smile Train team.
Aubrey, an ED doctor from Arizona here to help with the flow of patients just prior to the Smile Train’s arrival. She helped with rounds, delivered babies, and assisted in surgery also. She took the initial pre-op history and physical on many of the patients. Thus, she knew the patients’ names and histories better than most of us.
The anesthesia team. Dr. Ian from North Carolina, a professor in CRNA school with his two anesthesia students, Jenny and Ben. Ian is a friend of our old BFF, Mason. They work together in America, and Ian is one of the few people in the world who can put up with him. We are the other two people in the world (well, Kim... and Grace and Emmie... and everybody else who’s ever met him, everybody loves Mason McD). Ian gained notoriety when he calmly slipped in a completely blind nasotracheal tube after an old lady’s airway filled with blood from a bleeding oral mass during attempt McGrath intubation.
Bill and Laura Rhodes. Missionaries in Kenya for over 20 years. Laura is the surgical assistant and organizer of many of their Smile Trains. Bill is just the guy that does all of the surgeries. No big deal. You have a 3 kg bony tumor on the side of your head. Sure, let’s take it out. Piece of cake. He’s a plastic surgeon with a love for head and neck tumors. Or pretty much anything that anyone else can’t do, send it to Bill.
Together, this visiting team made miracles happen in Bere.
It’s impossible to tell all of the stories of patients that were helped. It was sure something special to be a part of the SMILE TRAIN this year in Bere. The first annual SMILE TRAIN! We were able to see the twinkle in the eyes of the healed cleft lips. (They weren’t able to smile well yet because they were post-op and not supposed to be moving their sutured and derma- bonded lip).
Cleft lips and palates are a malformation that these patients are born with. It’s no one’s fault. Yet the whole world looks at them as if they are a freak. In America, these patients would have undergone surgery early on. But two of our patients this year were adults, having lived their whole life being gawked and stared at.
The sparkle in their eyes when they looked into the iPhone on selfie mode and no longer saw a deformed lip. They saw a normal boy or girl. Just like everyone else. Priceless.
The first group was here for almost two weeks. There was so much work for a specialist such as Dr. Bill that we asked him to stay for another week. He said he would if we could find another anesthesia team as the first group already had tickets back to America.
Wait. What? Serious? You’ll seriously stay? I don’t think Bill thought we could pull it off. He thought that was a safe bet for sure. This is the morning of November 13.
Olen was on the phone immediately. ‘Hey, so I know it’s November 13 and all, but can you fly out in four days to come to Chad on your vacation time over Thanksgiving and work like a dog for free?’
We found a guy in TN who had done anesthesia school (just for you Geach). I went to Southern with Jonathan and Belen way back when. Then I followed them out to medical school at Loma Linda. Dr. Geach agreed to come with the other Dr Geach for the week of Thanksgiving at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. And faster than you can baste a turkey, we were into our 3rd week of speciality surgeries. More head and neck tumors. Thyroids, masses, and more clefts. And everything else under the sun.
Three weeks of starts anywhere between 5am and 6am every morning and going as late as 7pm to 10pm every. single. night. We worked HARD. God was good to us, however, and blessed us with miraculously few emergency cases to do during those three weeks, although there were some.
Here are some before and after pictures. There were 13 cleft lips and 2 cleft palates. And so many other crazy surgeries from the brain and hands of Dr Bill.
(At some point, and we will make it at this point, we should mention what amazing people Bill and Laura are. They are the most encouraging and positive and uplifting people we have ever met. And low-maintenance! We spoiled them with electricity and running water! They have raised four children in Africa, all of whom have grown up to be wonderful family-oriented Christians contributing to society. They take probably close to a dozen trips to various mission hospitals every year, which must be exhausting, but they still seem so energetic! The night before they left, they invited us in and talked to us for a very long time, encouraging us, hearing our visions, making us dream even bigger and possibly convincing us to commit to Bere even longer than we had previously imagined. You never know...)
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