Dr Weaver’s SEE Mission to Peru

In July 2010 my 16 year old son, Kyle and I went on a two week medical mission with Surgical Eye Expeditions International ( SEEintl.org ) to Huamachuco Peru. Huamachuco is a very remote village 11,000 ft in the Andes that has no access to eye care. The team consisted of 5 doctors and 19 volunteers. We saw 500 patients, many who had been waiting for days from even more remote parts of the Andes.

We could not have asked for a better group of people for our team. We came together from all over the U.S. to meet for the first time at 1 AM in the Lima airport for the 2 day bus ride over the Andes.

In spite of the rough conditions, at no point did I hear any member of the team, many of who were doctors’ kids, complain once. It would be hard to do so, knowing what adverse conditions the people all around them lived under on a daily basis.

I was particularly proud of Kyle. Day one in surgery, his job was to identify the patient in Spanish, mark the eye, dilate the eye and get the patient ready for surgery. By the end of the mission he was assisting me in surgery and doing a very good job. All of team worked hard and were a pleasure to be around.

A trip like this changes you. It makes you appreciate what a great country we live in and all of the things we take for granted.

The primary surgery we performed was for cataracts with most of the patients only being able to see day from night. All patients had very advanced diseases and some had things you would never see in the U.S. The conditions were challenging: altitude sickness, diarrhea, no drinkable water, having to bring all of our supplies and equipment, not operating with your usual team, unbelievably bad/scary roads ( our driver flipped our car at the highest part of the Andes on our way out), eating Guinea pig as our staple, long hours and hard work.

But taking the patches off the patients the next day reaffirmed why we were there. To see the smile on the face of someone who hasn’t seen in years or the tears of happiness from their family with “ Gracias, gracias medicalito” is something that touches your heart forever.

The hardest part of the mission was seeing patients that you knew were going to go blind or who were already blind, which you could have helped with medicines or technology that we use every day in the U.S.. It was also hard to leave knowing that so many other people still needed our care.

Would I do it again, in spite of the car wreck, losing 8 pounds on guinea pig with diarrhea and altitude sickness — my answer is an unequivocal YES!

For more photos of this trip, click here.