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Standing in front of the milk display at Whole Foods recently, Gloria Hicks, RN, found herself staring at the choices before her: skim, organic, local, soy. It was overwhelming. Having just returned from a volunteer trip to Ecuador, the choices available stood in stark contrast to the lifestyles of those she and the other volunteers had just spent a week helping.
“It seemed so unfair. It was a reminder to me about how lucky I am—how lucky we all are—to live where we do,” said Hicks, a nurse in BWH’s STRATUS Center for Medical Simulation and a per diem OR nurse at Faulkner Hospital.
Hicks had traveled to Ecuador with Medical Missions for Children (MMFC), a nonprofit organization made up of nearly 400 volunteer surgeons, anesthesiologists, medical and dental specialists. MMFC volunteers use personal vacation time to travel to remote areas around the globe to help children and young adults with cleft lip and palate deformities, burn injuries, microtia (absence of the outer ear) and head and neck tumors. The patients MMFC treats live in remote areas. Few of them have insurance, and they often have no means to get to a health care facility. And even if they were able to get to the facility, Hicks says, there is no guarantee that there will be the right people or equipment there.
“We bring everything with us, from operating equipment to medications to medical gowns,” Hicks said. “Many of us will ask for donations from the hospitals we work at, things that might be in surplus or that the hospitals no longer use.”
Hicks has been on several volunteer medical trips, first to Peru and then to Guatemala. She says it is the power and ability to be able to help others that compels her to continue to volunteer.
“On the first mission I went on, a surgeon who had been volunteering for 20 years spoke to the group. He told us that whatever your skill is, you no longer own it. It belongs to all mankind and is to be given away,” Hicks said. “And it’s true. These trips soften you, and make you kinder and gentler. You see how even the tiniest act can mean so much to someone.”
One of the most compelling moments of the trip came just days after Hicks and fellow volunteers operated on Carol, a 7-year-old who had been attacked by a dog several years prior.
“She had a terrible scar from her upper eyelid, across her forehead,” said Hicks. “When I saw her post-op, she was so happy. She and her parents were so appreciative of the help we gave them.”
While each volunteer mission is emotionally exhausting, Hicks says she plans to continue to volunteer abroad, and urges others to do the same.
“There are so many people who are interested in helping others, and the need is so great,” she said. “You come home from these trips, and you’re full of gratitude and humbled that you can come home and you have a bed to sleep in, a bathroom across the hall and running water. A trip like this is the sort of thing that changes you forever in the best of ways.”