Justyn's Blog
Dhaka Mission Reflection
(A reflection piece by Karen Oung, a student volunteer on the Operation Smile Singapore mission to Dhaka)
Personally, the most memorable moment on the mission for me was witnessing a baby boy undergo surgery in the Operating Theatre. That it took less than 45 minutes to repair the baby’s cleft lip and, in doing so, transform his life irrevocably was incredibly humbling. It took a few hours for my experience in the Operating Theatre to truly sink in, but it struck me then, just how much of a contribution the plastic surgeons had made to the lives of each and every patient on the mission. The impact of seeing Dr. Vincent Yeow and the entire medical team perform miracle after miracle was so great that it left me a little wistful for not having continued with the Sciences in Junior College, since this automatically rules out studying medicine as an option for me.
Over the next few days in Dhaka, however, I caught myself thinking about how great it would be, should I be able to contribute to the patients, not simply as part of the Medical Records team, but as a surgeon and with the ability to empower patients to lead a normal life. Naturally, I fully recognize that every member of the Dhaka mission team played a vital role in ensuring the success of the mission, but this awareness did nothing to stop these errant thoughts from popping up time to time.
Reflecting back now, I am not sure if the baby was mature enough to be aware or even fearful of the operation for which he was scheduled. Being so young, it wouldn’t be surprising if he has no memory of the operation in future, should his parents not tell him about it. However, I feel that this is precisely what makes Operation Smile truly amazing – that we can enable a cleft-lip baby to lead a normal life. After all, a normal life might seem nothing extraordinary to the vast majority but to the baby boy whose operation I observed and to all cleft-lip and –palate patients, a normal life is perhaps the greatest possible gift they can ever receive.