Honoring legacies

 

My father was a larger than life figure to me. His influence on me was greater than the sum of his parts as father, husband, surgeon. Along with my mother, he instilled the importance of familial bonds,  loyalty, tradition and generosity. He was a good son, a good brother and a great provider to his wife and children. He also loved his native homeland: Peru. He and my mother created an alternate family circle in the Louisville (Ky) area with other Peruvian families. So we had substitute "tios", "tias" and "primos" to locally celebrate all the social and important events of our life. And they took us to Peru to see our real family while growing up.

The story of my parents' and oldest sister's immigration to the US is quite harrowing and is the stuff of a great movie epic. I'll save that for a future post(s). While he and my mother would have preferred to live in a larger metropolitan city. That was not in the cards. In the late 1950's, the US government sent foreign doctors to underserved areas in the US with the promise of citizenship for the entire family if certain obligations set by the US were met. So he was sent to be the doctor for  workers building barges on the Ohio river. As it turned out, it took many, many more years than promised for the US government to release my father from obligations and grant citizenship and allow him to open his private practice. My father was bitter about this his whole life. He felt he lost many of his prime years. 

That is how we ended up in Kentucky and that is also why a  small circle of Peruvian doctors ended up in Kentucky. All these foreign doctors had to repeat medical training because the US did not acknowledge their degrees and so they all pretty much ended as up specialists in their field. That is how my father became a surgeon. My father used to always say that if you ever needed a medical specialist (in those days), pick a foreigner; as they will have had double medical training: one in their native country, and again, one in US. 

In the early 1970's my dad joined the newly formed  Peruvian-American Medical Society (PAMS). Of course he and his fellow Peruvian colleagues all networked and socialized with (North) American doctors, associations and hospital administrators. But PAMS was where they found home. There they could network and socialize with other immigrant Peruvian physicians. And while it was never stated in their bylaws, I am sure it was a safe space where they could avoid the racism of the white dominated medical field in the 1950s through 1990s. Again, I will have to save some of the indignities and downright racist happenings for other posts. I will tell their stories.  It is important to know the history. 

PAMS created a charitable arm of their association. They saw the wastefulness of US hospitals and wanted to support poor clinics and hospitals in Peru. My dad used to complain and show me stainless steel surgical implements that are one-time use in the US. He told me how all the hospitals had to do was sterilize them and they could be reused again. The waste killed him because he came from a country that did not have enough medical supplies. So PAMS collected these types of reusable US medical supplies that they would then send to poor clinics and hospitals in Peru.

My heart aches for my young father as I think of him performing surgeries with white colleagues, who after the surgery probably considered him gauche for asking to collect all the surgical implements they were going to throw away. I feel protective of him as I am sure they saw him as, at best, a bit classless. But all the PAMS doctors did this. And after they collected a large amount of items, they would then select a clinic or hospital in Peru, usually on the outskirts of Lima, and send these packages to them so they could be safely reused.

Once, when I was a teenager, a Peruvian ambassador to the US visited Louisville. PAMS hosted a reception for this ambassador in my parents home. As I listened to the ambassador give a small speech. I was so moved when he recounted stories of all the clinics and hospitals that had received PAMS donations over the years. He told how much the medical supplies had meant to the population in those areas and cited numbers of patients seen and surgeries made possible because of these reusable medical supplies. I was very proud. My mother and father have long passed, but I am no less impacted by their memories and proud of them. 

Recently, I had a shoulder surgery in which I had to keep my wounds, clean and dry. In order to shower, I had to buy large pieces of Tegaderm. Tegaderm™ dressings can be used to  protect IV sites, enhance wound healing, prevent skin breakdown, and protect closed surgical incisions. I ended up with an open box of over 100 large sheets of unopened sterile Tegaderm. Ever the thrifty gal, I tried to sell it through Marketplace or Offer Up to no avail. I tried to give it away but no takers. Then I had an AHA! moment and remembered PAMS charitable work. I then decided I wanted to send this to a poor medical site that would appreciate it.

I found a group,  MedShare, that would send it to places where it could be used. They did not care that the box was open as long as each Tegaderm was unopened and sterile.This was a small act for humanity, but it was a huge act of tribute to my father's legacy.  I give money regularly to social justice causes and have donated money for medical supplies before. But this simple act was far more meaningful to me than any other. We all have ways that we can keep the memory and legacy of our loved ones alive and we can always practice paying it forward. The opportunities are always around us. We just have to be vigilant to recognize them.