BOTOSANI, Romania -- While the miles between Kansas City and a small county in Romania are vast, the connection is tight. Kansas City-based Medical Missions Foundation has brought a medical team to this northern part of the country near the Ukraine and Moldova borders for the past 7 years. As the train pulls into the station in small town of Botosani (pronounced Boto-shawn), not only is it time to begin a new medical mission, but a chance to embrace the people who live here, and by now, are old friends.
“Daniel my stud!” shouts Ken Conde, a nurse anesthetist from Kansas City to Romanian translator and friend, Daniel.
The Kansas City nurses, doctors, therapists and artists bring an energy that is palpable. That energy is almost as important as the medical care itself.
Alison Butcher, a social worker who came her from Britain 18 years ago, says the mission is a huge lift for the poor. “There’s a lot of talk. The Americans are coming, the Americans are coming’, Butcher said.
Parents of poor children crowd the hallways of the town hospitals, hoping for help. Gabriel, a bright-eyed blonde boy, has an extra finger on one hand and hopes to have it removed. A tearful little girl named Anna has pain in her jaw. A 4-year-old boy named George has severe burns along his backside. His mom says several years ago he fell backwards into a pot of soup.
“Perhaps you are not so aware of the impact Medical Missions Foundation has here,” says Butcher. “It raises the morale of the people. It gives the average person on the street hope that they have a chance.”
The needs of the poor have not changed since Medical Missions Foundation began coming to Romania. But the Romanians’ ability to care for their own people has dramatically improved. In 2002, parts of the operating rooms were compared to something left from the 1950’s. Today, the hospitals here are full of new equipment, much of it donated by Medical Missions Foundation and the European Union. Many of the same Medical Missions volunteers return every year to train Romanian surgeons how to use the newer equipment.
“The doctors have learned a lot and taken great strides,” said Dr. Greg Heidrich, an American OBYGN. Does that mean this Medical Mission is accomplished? Perhaps not quite yet.
The outlying villages of Romania remain firmly rooted in the past. Horse and buggy is often the only mode of transportation. An elderly couple carrying watermelons for sale on a cart became a big treat for some village kids. While the simple lifestyle is charming and wholesome, the people here remain poor. They eat what they grow and slaughter. They do not have the money or transportation to bring their children to a doctor.
Surgery in the hospitals has progressed from a 1950 equivalent to what the United States saw in the 1980’s, but it is certainly not state of the art. “They are making great strides,” says Dr. Heidrich. “But I am not sure they are willing or able to fly on their own”.
Then there are the special cases, like 9-year-old Andreea. We had met her here before. Andreea fell head first into a pot of boiling water when she was a baby. Her small head has only half of its hair. In the past, Medical Missions Foundation surgeons have released scar tissue, allowing Andreea to move her arm. On this trip Andreea braved yet another painful surgery in which Dr. Phil Gutek took cartilage from Andreea’s chest to make her new ear. “She’s special to me,” says Dr. Gutek. “I’ve been following her for 3 years. She has one of the nicest smiles I’ve seen in a long time”.
Dr. Gutek sums up what many on this mission feel. And what brings them back every September. “It’s the just the chance to do something for some one else with nothing in return,” he says. “You go home with a good feeling.”
When the time comes for the team to go home, neither the Romanians nor the Americans are ever quite ready. “Every time we come here it gets harder and harder to leave” says technican Chas Griefe. As the team makes it way back to the train out that will begin the journey home, Romanian friends never fail to see them off with hugs and tears, and always the same hopeful question, “See you again next year?”
