But I Digress...

Today I am compelled to veer from my mother and family and look at another family, another generation with problems beyond the scope of my understanding. Problems that result not from their own doing but from this family's physical presence in a land beseiged by violence. A land where political unrest, religion and hatred have caused their world to explode, figuratively and literally. And in the midst of it a child pays the price.

The lead story in the Maine Sunday Telegram today tells the tale of this child and how a sniper's bullet shattered her skull and left such damage that after multiple surgeries in Iraq she was left with a dangerously unprotected brain. A situation that could end her life with a bump to the head.

This little girl now rests in our hospital, my hospital, under the expert care of two of the finest surgeons in Maine. Knowing their work as I do I suggest that they stand out farther than just Maine in their expertise, skill and dedication to their patients. And for the hospital itself, the donation of time, services and compassion are unsurpassed.

With that being said, as the Director of a mission team and participant for many years in medical mission work I have to question the long lasting results of bringing patients from other areas of the world to our hospitals for treatment. How much better is it to bring our services to them? To bring our skills, our equipment, our physicians and nurses and therapists to their hospitals to teach. To train the doctors and nurses there to care for their people and let them train the next generation of health care workers how to replace the missing piece of a child's skull, how to surgically repair a hole between the chambers of a heart (a relatively common birth defect), how to repair the damage of birth, accident or war.

While I commend my hospital and its physicians for the work they are doing, the restoring of this child, I grieve for the others who will not have access to the privilege of health care. Those who will rely on the hospitals, physicians and nurses of their country who may not have access to the education that will allow them to provide this level of care. I grieve for the doctors and nurses who know the skills exist but are at a loss to attain them through accident of where they exist in the world, the political walls that prevent education.

I look at the pictures in the paper today and while I celebrate the success of this child, of this family and their eventual reunion I can't help but feel overwhleming sadness at the missed opportunity for even greater successes if our physicians had traveled to an area in the world where they could have shared their knowledge and skill with others in their profession. Shared through teaching many who could then teach many more who could then teach many more and on and on, in exponential growth. Think then of the numbers of children and adults who would be saved. Give someone a fish and they eat for a day. Teach someone to fish and they eat for a lifetime.