Eye-Opening Journey to Haiti for GSDM Student
Fourth-year DMD student Thomas O’Connor hopes to become an oral and maxillofacial surgeon. He has had his sights set on this goal since before he entered dental school. His father, Dr. Stephen O’Connor an ER doctor in O’Connor’s hometown of Jasper, Indiana, introduced him to Drs. Matthew Monesmith and Kyley Wood, two Jasper Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons prior to his entering dental school, and the doctors have since become O’Connor’s mentors. O’Connor has completed his APEX rotations with them and earlier this month he accompanied them on their annual mission trip to Cap Haitien and Milo, Haiti.
This mission trip was a bit different than many of the others that GSDM students participate in. Instead of extractions and restorations, O’Connor assisted with cleft palate repair and surgeries to remove tumors and reconstruct jaws. In addition to O’Connor, Dr. Monesmith, and Dr. Wood, the group was comprised of O’Connor’s father, an anesthesiologist, a dermatologist, and two OR and OB nurses. The group visited the Children of Promise orphanage to examine and treat the 60 child residents and worked in at the Sacre Coeur Hospital in Milo during their week in Haiti.
This is the first time that the group has taken a dental student on the trip. O’Connor jokes that he spent most of the time holding the retractors in surgery, but explains the surgeries they performed with equal parts fascination, excitement and sadness.
One of the worst cases he says they saw was a women with a large facial tumor that the team brought into surgery only to find her tumor was inoperable. They did everything they could, even giving her the $300 needed for her to travel eight hours by taxi to Port au Prince for a CT scan, and having the results sent back to Milo by plane. But the CT scan only confirmed what they already knew, and they had to sadly tell the patient that there was nothing more they could do for her.
On a more positive note, O’Connor said, “Our greatest success on the trip was a surgery that we performed on a 14-year-old boy with a bilateral jaw fracture. The fracture happened two months prior and left him only able to chew on two teeth. The doctors re-broke his jaw, got his bite back together, and plated up the bone.” O’Connor continued, “Some people say that these mission trips are only a drop in the bucket, but I think if you change even one person’s life you are making a difference. This surgery changed the life of a 14-year-old boy, who with limited access to care, may have lived many more years or even the rest of his life only being able to chew on two teeth.”
O’Connor said that he was also inspired by the follow-up cases that they saw. Many of these patients had tumors removed during the group’s 2011 mission trip and now were back for jaw reconstruction surgery. He said, “The follow up cases were great to see. These people have their lives back. They no longer have tumors and were all fully functioning.”
This was O’Connor’s third mission trip. As an undergraduate he traveled with other groups to Ecuador and Guatemala. Despite his prior experience he said, “This trip was really eye-opening. The poverty and living conditions were so much worse than I had ever seen before. And the pathologies that we saw in the hospital were like nothing that you would ever encounter in the States because they would get caught much earlier.”
However, the conditions and the up to 10 hours a day spent in the OR, didn’t deter O’Connor. He really enjoyed the overall experience and hopes to become a regular member of this mission team.
Photos are available on facebook and flickr.