Siena student helps to spread smiles globally

By KATE BLAIN- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

On a white sheet covered with shaky children's drawings, one image stands out. It shows three faces in a row: one with its lower half covered, another with a monster inside -- and a third with a huge, beaming smile.

Nicole Francini, a freshman at Siena College in Loudonville, brought the sheet back from her recent trip to Honduras. The drawings were done by children who were receiving reconstructive surgery for cleft palates, cleft lips and other deformities.

For the 18-year-old, the visit was a life-changing experience. Until then, she was an undecided business major at Siena, debating a career in advertising. But watching a packed courtyard of Hondurans cheering for the American team who came to do the operations, she told The Evangelist, "I just knew, `This is the place I want to be.'"

Restoring smiles

Ms. Francini first became involved with Operation Smile as a high-school student in Demarest, New Jersey. Operation Smile is a private, non-profit volunteer organization that provides reconstructive surgery and health care, mostly in developing countries, for children and young adults.

One of the organization's founders graduated from Ms. Francini's high school. When she heard about the group, it sounded so different from other volunteer opportunities she had tried that she immediately wanted to get involved. Since all the team members involved in the surgeries volunteer their time and the supplies only cost about $750, she explained, donors know their money is going straight to the people who need it.

BY her senior year of high school, Ms. Francini was attending worldwide conferences with other students who raised money for Operation Smile. When she heard the story of a Filipino man who refused surgery for a ten-pound tumor on his face to let younger children go first, she wanted more than ever to go on one of the medical missions.

On a mission

Ms. Francini trained as a medical records specialist, learning to input patients' medical histories into a computer. Last December, she was notified that she had been accepted to go on a February mission to Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

"I was totally excited, not scared at all," she reported. But having only seen photos of patients, "I got a little scared before I left, wondering what the facial deformities would really look like in person."

Arriving in Tegucigalpa, her team found "an endless line" of children and parents who had hiked miles and camped out in a hospital's dirty courtyard in the hope of being chosen for surgery.

The student had to put the powerful image out of her mind and plunge into screening patients. In one week, she helped to screen 360 patients, 130 of whom had surgery. Surgical teams shared rooms and operated nonstop, doing one 45-minute operation after another to allow as many people as possible to get surgery before they had to leave.

Images of hope

In her free moments, Ms. Francini used her still camera and videocamera to capture images of the children in line.

"They all had the most beautiful eyes, but there were children with gums and teeth coming out of their noses, children with bone deformities -- things you never see here," she recalled. "And all the kids are so malnourished, you can't even guess their ages. A kid looks like a baby, and he's two years old."

The student was particularly touched by the story of a 14-year-old girl named Maria, who had never been outside her home before.

"Her family was so ashamed of her deformity," Ms. Francini recalled. "She looked like me, and they said she couldn't even read. I'm not a crier, but I felt [like crying]. I was on a really great mission."

Making a friend

When Ms. Francini became sick during the trip, the doctors gave her an IV. She lay in the recovery room all day and watch the children coming out of surgery.

Adaluiz, who was about ten, became one of her favorite patients. Badly burned when she fell into a cooking fire, Adaluiz couldn't use her arm because scar tissue had pinned it to her body. Her family had traveled 14 hours from the Nicaraguan border when they heard she might qualify for surgery.

Doctors cut off the scar tissue and did skin grafts to give the girl mobility again. Ms. Francini brought her a box of toys, including a teddy bear with a t-shirt that read, "I love you."

When Adaluiz woke up from surgery, Ms. Francini was waiting to greet her. "I was so happy to be there," she recalled, smiling.

Worthwhile trip

Although she missed a week of college to take the trip, Ms. Francini affirms that it was worth it.

"I'm so happy I went," she told The Evangelist. "I can't wait to go on another one. I want to apply [to become a] mission coordinator after college; that's a two-year thing."

She is also planning to start an Operation Smile club at Siena to raise funds for the organization. She was a little disappointed, however, at the goal that was set for her new group: $750. "In high school, we raised $12,000," she explained.

(For information on Operation Smile, call 757-321-SMILE or go to www.operationsmile.org.)

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