Coincidence

This is a story about two families that I met during my Operation Smile (OS) mission in Bolivia. While waiting for my luggage in the Santa Cruz airport, I started speaking to a younger man and his wife and child who were also waiting for their luggage. He noticed the OS stickers on my backpack and started asking questions about OS. He had a general idea of Operation Smile’s purpose but he wanted to know more about our role in Bolivia. I talked about our mission in Santa Cruz and he explained that he and his wife were nurses working with a Christian group traveling along the Amazon River, visiting small villages and providing medical care. He stated that he knew someone with a child that has a cleft lip and palate. I mentioned to him that he should notify her and have her and her child come to Santa Cruz this week for the screening.

On the second day of screening an American nurse from a small village arrived with a Bolivian 15 month old baby boy with a cleft lip and palate. They had flown in from a remote area two hours away. The boy began the screening process but when the surgeons examined him, she asked that they correct only the boy’s palate and delay the lip surgery. When asked why, she explained that she was the adoptive mother and she was concerned that if the birth mother saw the baby’s repaired cleft lip, she would change her mind about giving up the baby for adoption, a process which would not be finalized until a few weeks later. She stated that the birth mother had refused an earlier opportunity to have the surgery performed on her son.

After speaking with the surgeons, she was not sure if she would consent to the baby’s surgery because the surgeons would not agree to operate on his palate first. She continued with the screening process. Eventually she arrived at my station where I was checking that the charts were complete. We started talking. She mentioned that her friend had met someone at the Santa Cruz airport and told him about OS. What a coincidence! I stated that I was the person she had heard about. She continued to tell me about her work in the village and that she was in the process of adopting this baby boy. She has three other boys of her own and that this baby was a blessing to her family.

The mother did agree to the surgery and the baby was the first cleft lip to be performed on my table during the first day of the surgery week. As the baby went to sleep he started to cry but soon drifted off to sleep. The surgery lasted 45 minutes and his repaired lip look fantastic. I visited the baby and his adoptive Mom in post-op to check on them and to give the baby a teddy bear. She told me that she would contact me at a later date and let me know how everything was going.

- Greg Samson, RN, Operation Smile volunteer