Valley team travels to Mexico to donate surgeries

JENNIFER C. SMITH


McALLEN — A series of dilemmas confronted McAllen surgeon Dr. Julian Gomez III and his colleagues while performing surgeries in the tiny town of Niltipec in southern Mexico.
They faced oppressive heat and sticky humidity, no air conditioning and only a handful of fully equipped beds for their patients. Not to mention no power.

“This year and last year we ran out of electricity, so we had to do surgery by flashlight,” said Gomez, a smiling, cheerful man with close-cropped silver hair. “It’s not the Taj Mahal.”

He joined an 18-member team that traveled in late June to the town in Oaxaca to perform 37 surgeries free of charge for patients such as an 18-month-old to a 72-year-old woman.

The trip is the second for Gomez and his wife, Maricela, but the U.S.-Mexican collaboration began in the 1970s.

This year’s Texas contingent was as diverse as their clientele; they included doctors and anesthesiologists from Dallas and McAllen, their spouses, nurses, a South Texas College employee and several Baylor University college students and high-schoolers.

The group departed June 24 and returned July 1.

Niltipec, which is about 208 miles southeast of the capital, had 5,308 residents as of 2000, according to a state government Web site. Most of the town speaks Spanish and the indigenous Zapotecan language.

The town’s one, six-room medical clinic is staffed by a Mexican surgeon and anesthesiologist who actually live outside the town. The pair, which travels more than an hour to reach the facility, prescheduled appointments with the U.S. team.

Registered nurse Jim Chase jumped at the opportunity after attending a general surgery mission trip in Honduras with Gomez several years ago.

“They (patients) were wonderful, very grateful to receive the care,” said Chase, who is the director of perioperative services at Rio Grande Regional Hospital.

“It’s always a gratifying experience.”

Participants paid their own way — about $1,000 — for airfare, hotel accommodations and food.

Carmen Gonzalez admitted she initially questioned why she spent her vacation time in the sticky climate.

“It was so hot and these poor people were recuperating in a cot with a fan, flies everywhere,” she said. “You learn to appreciate what you really have.”

Gonzalez, the retention specialist for South Texas College’s developmental studies division, helped with triage, talking to patients and their families before and after surgery.

“I made sure they were comfortable, something to drink, I did some assisting in the operating room like pouring solution,” she said.

The extra hands helped: in a little more than three days the Dallas and McAllen teams operated on everything from hernias to vein stripping to the removal of cysts and bumps.

Dr. John Preskitt, who led the Dallas team, has been traveling to the area for about 25 years. His father-in-law, a former Shreveport, La. physician, started the program.

Medical excursions have become more infrequent as years have passed and government regulations on foreign travel tighten, but Preskitt said he hopes to arrange another trip in six to nine months.

“The people down there are like my family,” he said. “Without us, the people can’t get surgical care in their community.”