'A dream of few' heals many

A bay area doctor's group of volunteers returns to El Salvador, providing much needed medical supplies and services.

By MATTIAS KAREN

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 7, 2000

They've come a long way, the missionaries of mercy.

From Tampa Bay to El Salvador. From modern hospitals to a run-down clinic with an operating room in a garage. From the dream of one man to the relief of thousands.

For eight years they've come, a team of Tampa Bay doctors, nurses and volunteers. They bring clothes, toys, medicine and hope to people who have none.

This year's Mission of Mercy includes people from Tarpon Springs, Palm Harbor, Pinellas Park and Holiday. There is an eye surgeon, a heart surgeon, a neurosurgeon, a podiatric surgeon, a general surgeon and six doctors doing general health checks.

"It's going to be the best trip," said mission founder Dr. Roberto Araujo, an oncologist with offices in Pinellas and Pasco counties. "We are going to cover from head to toe. And everything in between."

The organization goes for about 10 days a year, and has grown from 15 people in 1993 to a full-fledged medical team that has helped treat nearly 40,000 patients. The medical missionaries have saved countless lives and helped hundreds to see or walk for the first time.

In the next seven days, they will help 6,000 more.

Once a year, the non-profit organization travels to the small Salvadoran mountain town of Jucuapa, working from sunrise to well past sunset. Volunteers pay for their own trip; many go during their vacations. They pack lightly so more medicine can be shipped with them. They return with even less: whatever clothes, shoes or makeup they take they tend to give away.

Sometimes they bring back things more valuable.

Like in 1998, when they brought Maria Cortez, a 3-year-old girl with a tangerine-sized tumor in the middle of her face, to Tampa to remove the tumor.

Maria's story was detailed in the St. Petersburg Times, and then reported by CNN and USA Today.

Early Today, the group of 34 will see the lines to their clinic in Jucuapa stretch for blocks as they start a weeklong treatment marathon.

And they're going to do it in conditions most American doctors wouldn't dream of operating in.

In an eight-room clinic, each room measuring about 6 by 9 feet, doctors and nurses will set up eight medical desks. The person at each desk will see 150 patients a day, hand out medicine and, if needed, send the patients to a surgeon.

Attached to the clinic is a small garage outfitted as an operating room, thanks to a $5,000 donation from Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs. When the group arrived in 1993, the garage was not wired for electricity, the roof leaked and bugs crawled in through broken windows.

There would be no air conditioning if not for the window unit from Kmart. Surgical instruments are sterilized with a pressure cooker on a cooking plate.

In that 15-by-15-foot garage, the team plans to remove about 100 cataracts next week, giving sight to a small portion of the blind who live in the area.

In a more modern hospital in the nearby town of Guadalupe, the surgeons will remove at least five tumors and do at least five brain surgeries as well as other, smaller operations.

"It's quite a feat for them," said Cynthia Roever, a 19-year-old volunteer making her fourth trip this year.

Roever, an Eckerd College student, heard about the organization through her father, Dr. Fred Roever of Tarpon Springs. In 1997, they both went, along with her brother Chris.

"Once I went down there, I knew this was right for me," Cynthia Roever said. "I've always wanted to do medicine. It's my passion, I guess you would say."

All that the volunteers, more than two-thirds of them making return trips, get for their effort is to see their names engraved on blue-and-white tiles at the Fuente de los Voluntarios -- the Fountain of Volunteers. Every volunteer since 1993 has had his or her name added to the fountain, in a courtyard in Jucuapa.

But there are other, more important rewards.

One was Maria herself, who now lives a normal life. Maria's family comes to see the group every time it returns.

Another special case, Maria Gonzales, was 16 in 1995 and suffered from a heart condition that Salvadoran doctors thought was irreversible. One of her heart valves had been damaged by rheumatic fever and she was dying. She was being nursed by nuns on the Salvadoran coast, who heard about the U.S. doctors who made miracles happen.

When Gonzales was brought to Jucuapa, she was about 5 feet 7 -- tall for a Salvadoran -- but weighed less than 70 pounds, Dr. Araujo said. Her heart rate was about 200 and even talking was a strain. She could do little more than sit still or lie down and never made it out of the third grade.

So the group flew her to Tampa and did free open-heart surgery on the girl at Tampa General Hospital.

In the next five months, Araujo said, Gonzales gained nearly 50 pounds. She finished primary school in two years. Today she's a teacher, helping adults learn to read. She also is married and has given birth to her first baby.

Then there's Claudia Guzman, the group's latest miracle, who went back to El Salvador about two months ago after having received a type of brain surgery that only three U.S. surgeons can perform, Dr. Araujo said.

Claudia had a large aneurysm at the base of her brain. To remove it, surgeons had to open the back of her skull, exposing the brain.

"You sneeze, and it ruptures," Dr. Araujo said.

Fortunately, Dr. George Giannakopolous, a physician at Helen Ellis who has gone on several of the trips, knew that one of the three surgeons who could perform the surgery worked in Gainesville. So Claudia was taken to Gainesville for the surgery -- at the expense of Dr. Giannakopolous -- and then recuperated at Helen Ellis for free.

"Things like this are things that compel us to go back," Araujo said. "Those children, they would die, they would have no future. Now, these three girls, they have a future."

Araujo talks about the mission with excitement, and for understandable reasons -- his family is from Jucuapa. His mother still lives there.

Araujo moved to Mexico when he was 17 to study at the University of Mexico. He came to Florida in 1980, shortly after civil war broke out in El Salvador.

In 1992, when he heard there was talk of peace in his country, he began dreaming about returning and bringing help. After a peace treaty was signed a year later, the Mission of Mercy made its first trip to Jucuapa.

He found a different country than the one he had left. Soldiers still roamed the streets in many cities. Several of Araujo's childhood friends had been killed, some by suicide. The iron fence around his mother's house was riddled with bullet holes. Unemployment was nearly 70 percent. Those who worked were lucky to make more than a couple of dollars a day.

At the end of 1993, the group returned, bringing two eye surgeons. They operated while bugs crawled in through the clinic's windows and animals sometimes wandered inside.

"But we did it," Araujo said. "And we did 83 blinds in four days. No complications, no infections, no problems."

Since then, the group has grown every year. Every time it has more resources, more medicine and better facilities. The local people have spent more than three years fixing up the clinic.

In 1997, the group became a registered non-profit organization, which made donations tax-deductible. Since then, donations have rolled in, most of them from hospitals giving away medicine. This year, the group shipped 534 boxes of medicine, clothes and toys.

Last year, Mission of Mercy doctors delivered their first baby -- a Caesarian-section on a 16-year-old girl. The mother named her daughter Merceda Florida -- "Mercy Florida."

"It takes a lot of years to complete the puzzle, but little by little, it comes together," Araujo said.

Later this year, the people of Jucuapa will receive another piece of the puzzle: an ambulance.

Jucuapa's current ambulance is an old, run-down pickup truck that has to be hot-wired to start. Some wheels lack lug nuts, and the bumper is tied on with a seat belt. Patients lie on the open bed of the truck.

So three months ago, the organization bought a used ambulance for $6,000. It was 5 years old and had 185,000 miles on it, but it ran. As soon as the organization can raise another $2,000 for shipping costs, it will send the vehicle to El Salvador.

The ambulance likely will be as appreciated as the organization. When the volunteers arein Jucuapa, people come fromacross El Salvador to be treated. Some even come from surrounding countries. Many walk all night to be among the first to arrive, only to find hundreds already in line at 6 a.m.

Seeing the people's reactions and living conditions offers a new perspective on life, said Betsy Musselman of Helen Ellis.

"I think it humbles you," Musselman said. "We are so lucky to have what we have."

Despite the number of people he has helped, Araujo said the organization's success is the result of all the people who have helped.

"It's not just me. So many people do so many things," he said. "It's a dream of few, but it's an effort of many."

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