Doing Small Things with Great Love
POSTED ON Feb 19, 2010 / UPDATED ON Jan 27, 2011
Dr. Peggy Sarjeant of Seattle, Washington, was part of one of Children of the Nations' (COTN) first medical teams on the ground about five days after Haiti’s earthquake. She worked both at Good Samaritan Hospital in Jimani and in COTN’s medical clinic in Barahona. Here, she shares her thoughts about her experience:
“Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.” ~Mother Teresa, 1981
Of course, I cannot speak for the rest of my COTN team, but I suspect that all would agree Mother Teresa’s words apply, on many levels, to our work at Jimani. For days, our orthopedic and general surgeons were unable to operate because there were more surgeons on the ground than had been anticipated and OR time was at a premium. Our anesthetists and surgical RNs were unable to work in the ORs for the same reasons. Performing life-saving surgery in the midst of such destruction is, indeed, a big thing. But for our team, skills would not be used nor expertise applied as hoped, or as anticipated.
Our surgeons, anesthetists and RNs put their own disappointments and expectations aside and performed jobs that easily could have been ignored. They all understood that true service means filling needs, regardless. They ran the OR board, organized supplies, transported patients in their arms, changed wound dressings, and started IVs in the dirt so that patients would not be in pain when their dressings were changed. They wrapped amputation stumps. They spread blankets over cold and exposed patients.
Small things, all.
My experience was no different. For me, Mother Teresa’s words meant letting go. Letting go the goals of providing meaningful medical care to everyone who needed it, of imposing order on the chaos when patients fled the hospital during the aftershocks; of touching—personally—every single patient. Letting go my lofty and self-indulgent goal of using this experience to bury the demons that caused me to leave the practice of pediatrics two years ago.
In the end, I walked with my dear friend Dr. Vicki Sakata through the patients sprawled on the ground and helped choose eleven children. Eleven children and their family members, from the hundreds of people in need. Eleven children COTN could help. It was so small, yet it was the hardest task I have ever been asked to perform.
I remember years ago, when I was a pediatric resident, telling a junior colleague that the only way to survive residency was to acknowledge that she could not help everyone. That the secret was to identify one patient with whom she could make an intimate connection and then to act on that conviction; to serve that particular patient in a way that mattered. Such a small thing, in the face of such great need.
On January 25, 2010, eleven children and their surviving family members were air-lifted by U.S. military helicopters to COTN’s clinic in Barahona, Dominican Republic. Among those on the ground in Jimani, the air lift operation was not without controversy—there were local air traffic control issues that grew complicated, there remained critical patients other organizations had not been able to arrange transport for. It was a difficult day, in many respects, but COTN and our team, had identified a need we could fill. In the face of hundreds, what we accomplished was small—and the smallness was overwhelming. But I must believe that what we accomplished was meaningful.
Mother Teresa says, “ . . . The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.” I understand that now, in a way I never could have before. It is easy to do the big things—surgery, anesthesia, facing one’s demons—because doing the big things gratifies our ego. The small things go unnoticed and are often perceived as worthless, if they are noticed at all. To persist in doing the small things requires a degree of love and commitment that is impossible for a human alone. It is impossible without Christ.
Our team accomplished small things, and I can only pray that the COTN teams that follow will also focus on accomplishing small things. Math works. Lots of small things add up to big things. I think Mother Teresa would agree.
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