Nazareth Area High School student travels to Inner Mongolia with Operation Smile

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

When the Inner Mongolian children started going wild for bubbles, it hit Cece Catena how blessed she truly is.

“The kids would go nuts,” the Nazareth Area High School senior said. “You really appreciate what you have when you see they get that excited over bubbles, even the adults.”

Catena traveled to Inner Mongolia and Beijing for 12 days in July with Operation Smile, a medical charity that fixes cleft palates and cleft lips.

Catena, 17, was one of two student volunteers on the trip who educated children and their families on dental hygiene and oral rehydration and played with children before and after repair surgeries.

It took two days of travel to reach Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, in northern China. About 400 children and adults flocked to Hohhot to try to get free surgeries to correct their cleft palates and cleft lips.

It was Operation Smile’s first mission to Inner Mongolia. An international and Chinese volunteer team performed almost 100 free surgeries, said Lauri Catena, Cece’s mother, who is Operation Smile’s national director of chapters.

Inner Mongolia is China’s least-populated province but it is still home to 24 million people, and many live in rural communities, Lauri Catena said.

Many families traveled hours and hours on a bus to learn their child was not eligible for the surgery, Catena said.

But she also witnessed the joy of children coming out of surgery, most of them ages 2 to 7, although one man was 25. An aspiring emergency room nurse, Cece Catena said it was thrilling to witness repair surgeries and work in a hospital.

With her mother working at Operation Smile, Catena long dreamed of joining a mission. She learned she was headed to China during a January mission training.

“I was in shock,” she said.

Inner Mongolia was dusty and quite poor, but the temperatures were pleasant, she said. The mission team stayed in a small hotel where the beds were like rocks, she said.

Catena tried to be adventurous in her eating, sampling sheep’s tongue but left unimpressed with the dining.

She awoke about 5:30 a.m. each day, arrived at the hospital by 7 a.m. and worked until early evening educating families and playing with children.

Many of those with facial deformities are shunned by their families and society and pointed out in public, so to help with the transformations was rewarding, Catena said.

One teenage girl tried to commit suicide after she was abandoned on the side of the road by her father, she said.

“Now, they can finally have a normal life,” Catena said.

After six days in Inner Mongolia, she returned to Beijing for three days of sightseeing and shopping.

“The Great Wall was amazing,” she said. “It was awesome.”

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DONATIONS FROM THE VALLEY

Children received blankets, toys, toothbrushes, crayons, coloring books and stuffed animals donated by Easton Orthodontics, Dr. Bryan Loftus and Dr. Anthony DeBerardinis, Easton Family Dental, Dr. James Newman and the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs of Nazareth and Bangor.
SOURCE: Operation Smile

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/nazareth/index.ssf/2011/08/nazareth_area_high_school_stud_1.html