New Hero: Catherine Hamlin

She's 88 years old and performs surgery every Thursday at the hospital she and her husband began, the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital.  From a series of interviews (well worth reading!) she gave in 2005 and 2006 with the co-producers of the wonderful and striking documentary "A Walk to Beautiful," which is all about the hospital and its patients, and can be found on Netflix:

We had one sitting on the border with Kenya who arrived with a dirty envelope. Inside was a letter from her missionary doctor saying, "Would you please cure this girl's fistula?" The letter was dated six years before. My husband said, "Why did you wait so long?" She said, "I've been sitting at the bus stop for six years trying to get the money." It's $20.00 to get to Addis Ababa.

Have you ever heard of an obstetric fistula?  Perhaps not, particularly if you live in a place far from Ethiopia, a place where they have been almost completely eradicated for the past hundred years--a place like the United States.  And no one would blame you, since even to most obstetricians they're more of an academic anomaly, something to hear of and mostly forget, since it would be a curious rarity if you ever came across one.

This type of fistula is a hole, usually caused by obstructed childbirth, of varying size, depending on its severity, that causes continual urinary and, in some cases, fecal, incontinence: constant leaking.  (Click "Obstetric Fistula" on the website for A Walk to Beautiful for more information and some figures.)  Mrs. Hamlin estimates there may be 100,000 women in Ethiopia living with the condition--one that is often associated less with childbirth than with divine retribution, and that by destroying physical barriers made of tissue almost always erects stringent social barriers against women who have experienced a fistula.  She doesn't judge, neither the community that separates the affected women from its daily practice of life nor the husbands who often exit the scene within days or weeks of discovering their wives' affliction.  She and her team, in whose members she has such confidence that she reports she has no qualms about the hospital's continued service after she dies, just repair and stitch and love.  Their surgical success rate for repairs is over 93%.

After my doula training the past several days, I've begun to entertain the idea of pursuing a career as a midwife--much less glorious than an obstetrician, see, and probably much less accepted in a biomedical paradigm, too, but so, so human.  And not that obstetricians cannot be, or as a rule are not--there's just something different in the practice of midwifery versus the practice of obstetrics.  I have a lot of respect for midwives.  But to repair a fistula, you need the hands of a surgeon, and those are the hands of an obstetrician, not a midwife.  So I'm excited for organic chemistry, and physics, and whatever else my next semester as a premed brings me--just more chances for God to prove He's awesome, since He'd have to be to use one like me for such a thing as to help repair the bruises and nicks His creatures suffer while we're clothed in our earthly dwelling.

We know that God is behind this work. I want to say that specially, that He has helped us over the years. We believe in prayer, and we believe that He has answered our prayers for many individual patients. With the work in the hospital we've been blessed. 

If I had a record of heroes, Mrs. Hamlin would surely be near the top.



P.S.  A few more good resources, most of them from Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/12/opinion/12kristof.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/kristof-saving-the-lives-of-moms.html
http://www.engenderhealth.org/our-work/maternal/fistula.php