Getting to the Heart of a Medical Mission

By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007; T15


After her experiences treating war-wounded Marines at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Lt. j.g. Melissa McMurry was not expecting much emotion on her deployment aboard the hospital ship Comfort, now in a four-month humanitarian mission to Latin America.

But the Navy nurse learned otherwise during the ship's first foreign port of call, in Belize. Hector Carritos, a 2-year-old from Valley of Peace, was taken aboard the ship for surgery to repair a clubfoot, a birth defect that would have prevented him from walking properly.

"Seeing the surgery and the outcome was amazing," McMurry wrote last week in an e-mail. "All I could envision were the opportunities for this child later in life to actually function without pain and have some normalcy."

McMurry listened as the surgeon, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Eric Shirley, briefed the boy's mother after the successful operation and watched the look on her face turn from anxiety to relief.

"The emotional mixture of laughing and crying pretty much opened my eyes to the kind of life-altering things we are doing for people on this mission," McMurry wrote.

The USNS Comfort, home-ported in Baltimore and carrying medical staff from the Bethesda medical center and elsewhere, sailed from Norfolk on June 15. The 900-foot-long converted supertanker, white with huge red crosses painted on its side, is about halfway through its mission, meant to bolster U.S. ties with Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Comfort arrived in Peru on Aug. 6, after port calls in Belize, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Ahead are visits to Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Haiti. By the time the mission ends in October, the Navy predicts the Comfort's personnel will have treated 85,000 patients and performed 1,500 surgeries.

The ship has about 780 people onboard, including roughly 500 medical personnel from the Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard and Public Health Service.

Many have had experiences similar to McMurry's. "I never dreamed that I would have an experience of a lifetime," said Lt. Kristina Oliver, a Navy Nurse Corps officer who has spent three years treating injured service members at Bethesda.

"They love making a difference," Navy Capt. Robert E. Kapcio, the mission commander, told Pentagon reporters during a video teleconference from the ship Aug. 7. "A lot of people volunteered to come on this mission and give up their summer vacations and everything else to come on this deployment, and it's really what's made this mission special."

The Comfort is also carrying Navy Seabee engineers from Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 202 from Little Creek, Va., as well as 15 members of the U.S. Navy Showband from Norfolk, who play at the many ceremonies marking the ship's tour.

The Comfort has spent about a week in each country. Once they have arrived at a port, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel generally travel each day by boat or helicopter to sites ashore, where they set up primary care sites, Capt. Bruce Boynton, commanding officer of the Comfort's 1,000-bed medical treatment facility, said at the Pentagon conference.

Dentists fill cavities, pull teeth and apply fluorides and sealants. Children are given immunizations. Labs are set up to conduct tests, and a rudimentary pharmacy dispenses medication.

Patients with more serious problems are flown back to the Comfort for surgery and recovery. At times, the ship has as many as 100 patients.

Some children have had surgery to correct cleft lips and palates. "When you see the look on the mother's face, it's like having her child reborn right there in front of her," Boynton said.

Others have been treated for serious eye problems. "I never realized that children could have cataracts like we've seen down here," Kapcio said. "And we've had a 12-, 13-year-old boy who had cataracts in both eyes, basically was blind, and walked off here being able to see. And that's pretty amazing."

In Guatemala, Elvira Cab, a woman suffering from a painful hernia, read a newspaper article months ago announcing the Comfort's plans to visit Puerto Barrios, 290 miles from her home. "She spent four months plotting about how she was going to get to Puerto Barrios," Kapcio said. It took her six days to get to the port, "a combination of walking, taxi and truck and staying in a hotel . . . but she made it," he added. "And she got her hernia repaired."

In Nicaragua, the Seabees repaired the water system at a health care center in Chinandega that had been without running, potable water for three years. In Acajutla, El Salvador, the Seabees replaced the rusted metal roof of an elementary school that leaked on children's books and desks, according to a Navy report.

The Comfort traversed the Panama Canal on July 10, making the 50-mile trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in about 10 hours. It was a tight squeeze. The waterway accommodates ships up to 106 feet wide in the canal's locks; Comfort is 105 feet, 9 inches wide.

After the visits to Nicaragua and El Salvador, the Comfort sailed south across the equator Aug. 4, an occasion for traditional maritime initiation rites for all who had not previously made the crossing. "It sounds mundane, but it was quite the festivity as hundreds of crew members -- service members and civilians -- were accepted by King Neptune into his court," Kapcio wrote in a Web log he is keeping of the trip, adding that it was "quite an eye-opening" experience for Air Force personnel aboard the ship.

McMurry enjoyed a "steel beach picnic" on the Comfort's deck as it passed through the canal and joined the ranks of the initiated after crossing the equator. But the patients have been the most memorable part of the mission.

"Although taking care of my Marines was one of the greatest experiences of my life, this mission has a completely different feel," she said. "Of course the Marines were always thankful, and we had an instant bond with them as Navy nurses, but these people in these countries are getting something that they more than likely would never get."

Ellie