In 1992, a handful of Colombian children sat in our Chicago clinic while their caregiver posed a rhetorical question:
“Wouldn’t it be great if you guys could care for the kids in their own country rather than take them so far away from their homes and family?

Two months later, we were on a plane heading to Colombia with its smoldering struggles.
We thought we were heading to “help and teach”—so wrong.

During 30 years of surgical work in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Jordan, and Ukraine the world has changed, and I so did I.
I’m a better surgeon for all the docs and nurses who spoke beautiful languages I could hardly understand, yet taught me to do so much more with so much less.