89 Lives changed so far!

      As of today (Wednesday), we have completed 89 surgeries and screened 134 patients. It has been five busy days filled with incredible moments and people.

     I have seen many older patients arrive for screening; patients who have lived 25, 45, 60 years with their cleft. The infants are innocent. The brutality of the world has not yet impacted them and they are unaware of the deformity they have been born with. They laugh, play, and giggle like any child, free from the knowledge that they are different.

As age increases, so does the impact of the harsh world we live in. Some patients as young as 4 years old are aware that they are different and enter screening shy and apprehensive. As the week progresses, they open up in the presence of other children with clefts and their personalities shine through.

Many older patients are reserved and quiet. Some cover their clefts with scarves. The language difference is more pronounced as we cannot communicate as efficiently through play as we do with the smaller children. A smile truly is the only language we all have in common. A simple smile goes a long way in making a connection with patients. The older patients befriend each other, oftentimes the first people they have seen that look just like them. It is common to find these patients playing cards and hanging out in the shelter. In the postoperative ward, many of the older patients continuously express their gratitude to the nurses, surgeons, and the student volunteers.

    Lakshmi, a 45-year-old man, quickly won over the hearts of the volunteers. He was shy and nervous throughout screening and hobbled from station to station, a deformed foot hindering him. He was the first older patient to come through screening and everyone was eager to know his story. We discovered his intriguing story when Archna, the local programs coordinator saw him.

Archna spends months recruiting patients to come to the missions. She helps set up partnerships with district government accredited health activists whose relationships with local villagers enables them to spread the word efficiently about Operation Smile.

     It was on a recruiting mission to the district hospital in when Archna first met Lakshmi. He had worked in a vegetable stand inside the Hospital grounds for over thirty years, but it was not until Archna informed him of Operation Smile that he realized that his cleft lip could be fixed. Lakshmi lived his entire life thinking his cleft was permanent. When he heard the news he was skeptical but Archna was able to convince him to travel to Bhubaneswar for the mission.

      Lakshmi never attended school, as he was the son of a poor subsistence farmer. He was the only child in his area with a cleft and the children in his village teased and mocked him endlessly and made his life miserable growing up.  He found relief in the fields harvesting rice with his father out of the view of his misunderstanding peers. Until her boarded a bus to come to the mission site, Lakshmi had never traveled far from his village. He traveled six hours by bus before arriving at the hospital.

Since his arrival at the hospital his cheerful demeanor and big smile drew everyone in. One day, I walked into the shelter, and Lakshmi had organized an impromptu card game with the high school volunteers. When asked to take pictures he would reply yes with a slight nod of his head and smile. Lakshmi was scheduled for surgery at the end of the day and did not complain once about his thirst or hunger. He waited patiently for his turn for surgery and smiled hugely when we dressed him in a boa and sunglasses.  After a mini photo shoot he asked for a picture of himself. We remembered that the medical records volunteer had brought a Polaroid camera on the mission and ran to get it. His excitement over receiving the picture was priceless and he clutched it to his chest tightly. When his time came for surgery, he stood up confidently and walked into the operating room. The following day in post-op he perked up when he saw us and gave us a high five.

    Each year in India, approximately 35,000 children are born with a cleft deformity; 1,500 in the state of Odisha, where this mission took place. Additionally, there is an estimated 20,000-person backlog of cleft patients in this region. This week we saw patients of all ages, including numerous older patients, which is uncommon. Operation Smile began working in Odisha a year and a half ago and will determinately reduce the number of people living with clefts here in the years to come and change hundreds of lives like Lakshmi’s.

Lakshmi