Assistant Editor
People who own little of value recently taught two nurses from the Albany Diocese about the value of people.
Rose Tokarz and Linda Klompas, registered nurses who work at Seton Health-sponsored Schuyler Ridge Residential Health Care/Adult Day Care in Clifton Park, spent the first 12 days of August in the Dominican Republic, providing basic health care to the poor.
"It's fun to keep telling our story, but you can't even explain the experience," Mrs. Klompas admitted during a recent interview at their workplace, where the pair have become minor celebrities. "The experience we had was our reward."
North and South
The trip, sponsored by the University of Southern Maine, brought about 40 doctors, dentists, nurses, dental hygienists and others from around the U.S. to a Catholic mission in Fusemania. Mrs. Tokarz heard about it through her daughter, Christine, a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic who served as one of the translators on the journey.
"She talked me into coming down," Mrs. Tokarz said. The nurse was secretly eager to make the trip: A member of Grace Episcopal Church in Waterford, she had once wanted to be a missionary nun.
Mrs. Klompas, a parishioner of Corpus Christi parish in Round Lake, had also long been interested in trying a mission to a Third World country. She said that the Dominican Republic sounded safe, so she jumped at the chance to accompany her co-worker.
On the ground
The pair paid their own fares but asked donations of health supplies and money from various organizations, including Seton Health. When they flew into Puerta Plata, they had to patiently wait for customs agents to go through every medical bag they brought. However, they were soon on their way to tight quarters at the mission and long, daily drives in cramped flatbed trucks to the outlying villages, where they saw an average of 120 patients every day.
The makeshift clinics the group organized in cement-block churches and schools had no running water or electricity, and "you felt like you were going to melt from the heat," said Mrs. Tokarz. But the desperately poor folk who came waited patiently outside all day to see the healthcare workers.
In fact, the pair said the atmosphere was celebratory: Patients dressed in their best clothes and teenage girls donned high heels to walk dusty roads to their appointments. The people, while poor, were happy and occupied themselves with their favorite pastime: visiting with one another.
Hands-on work
The nurses said their work on the trip was far different from working with the elderly at home. Each patient received a head-to-toe checkup and, with the help of translators, described any unusual symptoms. Instead of referring patients to specialists as they would in the U.S., the nurses had to do a lot of hands-on work.
The pair found that most of their patients had foot fungus from wearing rubber boots to keep their feet dry in the tropical environment. Having little healthcare education, some patients also tended to focus on less-important symptoms. "One lady was in heart failure, and all she wanted to talk about were some spots on her skin," Mrs. Klompas remarked.
Another man showed them lumps on his skin; when they asked the cause, he explained matter-of-factly that whenever he cut himself badly with his machete, he put a piece of felt in the wound to help the skin grow together. The healthcare workers were amazed to note that it worked.
Kids
Seeing children delighted the nurses. While many of them had various kinds of worms, the youngsters were so beautiful that the workers were struck by it.
In one case, Mrs. Klompas learned an emotional lesson from this. "We had to hold all the babies, and I'd say, `Oh, I want that baby!'" she said. "And the translator would say, `I'm not going to translate that, because they would give up their baby [so it could] come live in America.'"
The two biggest health conditions the nurses encountered were hypertension and diabetes. While many people also had infections, the nurses noted that antibiotics worked like magic on people who rarely had access to them.
The faith of those they met impressed the visitors, as well.
"Everything was `because of the grace of God,'" said Mrs. Tokarz. One man with a wound told Mrs. Klompas, "Some things men can't heal, only God." From then on, she prayed over his injury before treating it, which pleased him.
Reflections
After nearly two weeks, the pair returned home with a sense of pride in their accomplishment. They told The Evangelist that the work of registered nurses in the U.S. is often more administrative than hands-on, and that they enjoyed doing complete care.
"It's a way of nursing we'll never do again unless we go on another mission," Mrs. Tokarz commented.
The brief trip changed the way the nurses feel about many things. "My family seems more important," said Mrs. Klompas. "Money doesn't matter that much. You wonder why people are such workaholics. You almost feel guilty for what you have."
"I find myself being kinder to people," Mrs. Tokarz put in. "What I used to get upset about before, in the big picture really isn't a big deal."
Angelic visitors
The nurses joked with each other that getting tired back home seems strange after having worked nonstop every day for 12 days and not feeling tired in the Dominican Republic.
"They hugged us and told us we walked with the angels when we were done," said Mrs. Klompas.
(Mrs. Tokarz and Mrs. Klompas urge Catholics in the Albany Diocese to support missions. Donations to the University of Southern Maine's trips can be sent to: DR-4137, U.S.M., College of Nursing, 96 Falmouth St., Portland, ME 04104-9300. For information on the trips, call Anne Keith, RN, at 207-780-4138.)