Back when Brian O’Donnell was in medical school, he and a classmate talked about doing medical missionary work. Then two years ago, O’Donnell, who’d trained at Walter Reed Medical Center and had been a family doctor before taking a dermatology residency, called his friend and said, “Let’s do it.”
They and two of O’Donnell’s daughters, then 14 and 16, went to Guatemala with a church group and worked in isolated jungles and one city. He and his group worked for ten days without electricity or running water. “I was functioning as a family practitioner,” he said. “I was comfortable doing this kind of work. Twenty years ago this was what I was doing.”
O’Donnell had served as an Army physician after medical school. He now practices dermatologic and skin cancer surgery in South Freeport. This past April O’Donnell and daughter Chelsea, now 16, joined his friend Jim Carlson, of the South Gorham Baptist Church, and a group of 30 led by Calais general surgeon Robert Chagrasulis, M.D. on an intense one-week trip to the Dominican Republic.
Dr. Chagrasulis has made the trip 25 to 30 times in the past 14 years. He said most doctors in this country have an interest in humanitarian work because what’s missing in medical practices today is the personal touch.
Although he attends church, he said he doesn’t go on medical missions to evangelize. His team, one-third of the group, set up and worked in medical clinics, the other two-thirds helped build a church. The intense part for the medical team was seeing 200 to 250 patients each day; the intense part for the church team was building a foundation for the church by hand in humid, 90-degree temperatures.
They stayed in the city of La Romana, on the southeastern tip of Santo Domingo and set up a clinic adjacent to the dump. “It was a community of hovels right beside the dump,” O’Donnell said. The people were working through the dump, pulling out food and clothes and discarded items they could use for shelter. He said he saw a lot of infections and problems like hypertension and diabetes that, if they get out of control, age people very quickly and cause them to die a lot younger.
“By our standards,” he said, “they were in their thirties or forties, but they looked twenty years older. “We’d make diagnoses and make medications, and start them on treatment, and suggest they follow up in the city hospital, but it was likely there would be no follow-up, no extended care.
Not far from the city, O’Donnell said, “There are hundreds of miles of sugar cane plantations worked by Haitians who can’t find work at home. They live in small batays — shacks.” He said his team would travel to groups of 20 to 50 adobe shacks with corrugated tin roofs and dirt floors. Each group lived 10 to 20 minutes apart. Each had a well and often, Dr. O’Donnell said, they’d set up a clinic at the schoolhouse. The medical team consisted of Chagrasulis, O’Donnell, and Peter Wilkinson, D.O., also of Calais; four student nurses from Portland’s St. Joseph’s College; two registered nurses; Chelsea O’Donnell; and translators speaking Creole or Spanish.
They treated the sugar cane workers for diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure and, because of the heat and humidity, a lot of fungal and skin infections.
What the team did that affected people the most, O’Donnell said, was touching them and listening to them through translators. “We would shake their hands and hold their babies, and try to treat their problems. They were immensely grateful.”
The medical team spent one day at a maximum-security prison. “It was nasty; terrible conditions,” O’Donnell said. “They’re living in rags.” Upon being told doctors would be coming, the inmates ran and fought to be first in line, leaving behind the weakest and the poorest, who probably needed help more than those at the head of the line. “It was a sequence of really tough, hardened criminals with all kinds of violent behavioral problems,” O’Donnell said, adding that he thought they were in line partly to garner medicines to trade in the prison economy.
“They were always looking around, shifty, looking behind them,” he said. “I think they’ve got to be vigilant all the time.” The inmates were always on edge, he said, “except for a few we saw. There were three or four guys [out of the 200 seen] who came in,” he explained, “and these guys made eye contact with me. They asked me how I was. They thanked me, and they had a bit of a sunny personality in the midst of it all and were pleasant.”
Curious, O’Donnell asked the warden, in English why these few men were so different. “Oh, yeah, those guys,” the warden replied. “Those are the guys that accepted Jesus in the prison Bible study.” O’Donnell said, “I pressed him. I said, `You mean, in the midst of all this squalor that accepting Jesus as your savior is going to renovate your life?’ And the administrator said, `Of course. Jesus renovates everybody’s life.’
Chelsea O’Donnell’s trip to Guatemala two years ago had given her “a taste for missions and medical missions, and also, for different cultures.” She said, “I had loved, absolutely loved, working with the people of Guatemala and wanted another opportunity to work with the people.” She spent two days working with the medical group, two days with the construction group, and was disappointed at being given the fifth day off.
“What was really astounding was to see the joy of the people. There was a lot of contentment. They seem to be just loving life. It was incredible. They have the clothes on their back and a tiny little hut about the size of a car port, yet it seemed as if they were content.”
Chagrasulis works through a church because it handles all the administrative details and holds fundraisers for the missions.
Those who want to apply have to work with the church team and be part of the fundraising, he said, “so we know they’re serious
about it.”
To apply or donate contact the South Gorham Baptist Church, Project Dominicana, 53 County Road, Gorham, ME 04038 or call 207-839-3430.
