LEÓN, Nicaragua ? Seven doctors and a surgical tech from Madison plunged into a sea of need: parents clutching toddlers with cleft lips and cleft palates, women hiding faces with grotesque bumps and birthmarks, men whose crooked noses suggested car crashes or bar fights. More than 70 patients gathered, most sitting on wooden benches in the hot, cramped, open-air waiting room of León?s public hospital. Some had traveled from hours away. They were waiting for the American doctors to join Nicaraguan doctors and perform the transformative magic of reconstructive plastic surgery. By the end of their visit last month, the UW-Madison doctors would be reshaped, too.
Office of Strategic Communication