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St. E’s doctor, with volunteers’ help, turns his dream mission into reality
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
BOARDMAN
They call themselves the “Dream Team.
Dr. Michael K. Obeng, chief of St. Elizabeth Plastic and Reconstructive Services, and five area surgical nurses went to Ghana this weekend to begin a weeklong medical humanitarian mission.
Dr. Obeng and his team of volunteers, all from St. Elizabeth Health Center — Glenda R. Bell-Golec, who started the “Dream Team” moniker; Roberta J. Hamilton, Angela Lee, Kathleen A. Fimognari and Juanita “Nita” Combs — represent more than a combined 100 years of medical experience and expertise. They will be joined en route by Tatiana Blanchard, a medical student from Florida.
They call it the “Dream Team” because it has been a dream of Dr. Obeng’s to lead a medical mission of his own to his homeland, where he has participated in missions in the past.
Also, all of the nurses said it always had been a dream of theirs to participate in a mission.
“I want to help people who might not otherwise have reconstructive surgery offered to them,” said Bell-Golec, team leader.
“I’ve always wanted to do a mission trip. I think God told me I had to go,” said Hamilton.
The mission is under the auspices of a private, nonprofit medical-services organization — R.E.S.T.O.R.E. Worldwide Inc., created by Dr. Obeng, to provide free reconstructive surgery and related medical services to abused children and battered individuals with accidental deformities.
R.E.S.T.O.R.E. is an acronym for Restoring Emotional Stability Through Outstanding Reconstructive Efforts.
Dr. Obeng and his team, which left St. Elizabeth Boardman Health Center around noon Friday, will have a day to get acclimated before they begin an intense five days with patients.
On Monday, they will evaluate 75 patients and choose 25 on whom to perform surgery, said Dr. Obeng, of Poland.
In past visits to Ghana, Dr. Obeng said he concentrated on congenital breast diseases and breast cancer, burns and traumatic hand injuries.
In addition to working in the operating room, Dr. Obeng and the nurses will be teaching Ghanaian surgeons and nurses, he said.
Dr. Obeng, a naturalized U.S. citizen, also is a staff surgeon at St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown. He is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery, a clinical assistant professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and clinical assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine. His office is in Boardman Medical Pavilion.
The R.E.S.T.O.R.E. idea came to him while he was a medical student at the University of Texas in 1999 or 2000, when an assistant professor, Dr. John H. Miller, said, ‘You are a surgeon, and you are from Ghana. ... Maybe we should go to Ghana and do some surgery to help people out.’”
“The people in Ghana are desperate for help. People pulled on my coat and said, ‘Please stay,’” Dr. Obeng said of his last visit.
“I told the team they will see all that we have that we take for granted, and they will see children scrambling for something to eat,” he said. “I told them they will never be the same.”