Jason Caron, M.D., has been doing mission work for more than 15 years. Now an orthopedic surgeon at Sanford Health Bemidji, Dr. Caron has made it a priority to spend some time in Peru every year since he was in residency at the University of Minnesota.
“Part of what attracted me to orthopedics is I always wanted to have the ability to go to the developing world and use the gifts and training that I have to be able to benefit people,” Dr. Caron said. “We’re mending broken bones and we’re fixing arthritis, but we’re also bringing a message of hope for people.”
Dr. Caron travels with the faith-based nonprofit group Scalpel at the Cross. Each trip Caron spends 10 days in Pucallpa, a town in eastern Peru’s Amazon rainforest. He says the area doesn’t have the resources or equipment you would find in the United States, and the number of doctors is much lower too.
Photo courtesy of Jason Caron
“The town that we go to is 350 to 400,000 people. I don’t know how many orthopedic surgeons there are in Fargo, but there’s probably 30. Bemidji, there’s another four. Whereas down there, you literally have five or six orthopedic surgeons for the whole area. So they’re overwhelmed with the volume of work, and then they’re lacking in resources tremendously,” said Dr. Caron.
Expanding the mission
Aside from helping Peruvians in need, Dr. Caron also sees these trips as an educational experience. He began going as a resident and now he has come full circle, bringing residents along with him as well. A few years ago, he brought a student to Peru, and now the two are colleagues at Sanford. Cody Sessions, M.D., says he went into medicine specifically to work in places like Pucallpa.
“Ninety percent or more of orthopedic surgery is done on less than 10% of the population, so generally orthopedics has been reserved for the nations of affluence,” Dr. Sessions said. “It’s really a big deficit in a lot of developing countries. So that was something that I was passionate about working to improve.”
The two men shared countless examples of helping patients who otherwise would not have had access to surgery without their mission group.
“They can’t afford it, or it’s not done in this city. They would have to go to Lima (Peru’s capital) and they can’t even afford the flight to get to Lima,” Dr. Caron explained. “So you come down and do a surgical campaign where you do hip replacements and you’ve got someone who’s been in a wheelchair for four years. It’s just a life changing thing and seems like a miracle to them.”
“It’s always fairly emotional when you’ve been involved in a case that redeems somebody’s life in such a meaningful way because of the skill, technique and equipment that you were able to bring,” said Dr. Sessions.
For Dr. Sessions, the mission work ended up meaning even more than he could have imagined. He met his wife, Luzmila, in Pucallpa and the two plan to move down there after about 10 years of practice in the United States.
Photo courtesy of Cody Sessions
“I went down three times and every time, we’d go back to our own lives. But after the third trip we started communicating a little bit more routinely and realized that this was something,” Dr. Sessions said. “She was a doctor in Peru and her father is actually an orthopedic surgeon down there as well. And so it just was kind of like a constellation of like, right now we don’t overlap at all, but if we were to draw our paths out to the future far enough, they really transect in this same spot.”
‘It’s life changing’
In the same way that Dr. Caron was brought along by his mentor, and eventually brought residents like Dr. Sessions, these two doctors are now bringing other members of the Sanford team as well. They continue to expand opportunities for other Sanford Bemidji employees to help their cause.
Last year, Nikki Pink, DNP, travelled to Peru with Scalpel at the Cross as well.
“I have a huge heart for mission work. I’ve been doing it for the last 10 years, and my last mission was on the Amazon River, and I just absolutely loved it. I loved using my skills to help others,” said Pink, who works in Sanford Bemidji’s dermatology department. “This was also obviously a surgical mission, and a lot of my missions tend to be more vaccinations and health education. So this I thought would be a really good way to get immersed into surgery.”
Pink said the 10 days were filled with work, and the fact that Dr. Caron and Dr. Sessions sometimes go multiple times each year is praise-worthy.
“The environment is not something where you’re on vacation. You’re physically exhausted by the time you’re gone,” Pink said. “They’re very busy in their practices here. So for them to take time to do this every year just speaks to their heart and who they are as people and I was really impressed with both of them.”
Photo courtesy of Nikki Pink
Dr. Sessions says bringing other staff members like Pink helps in many different ways, even if orthopedics isn’t their area of expertise.
“She was a wonderful asset,” Dr. Caron said. “Nikki actually helped a fair amount in the operating room because she’s a dermatologist and knows how to close skin wounds and has a medical background. She certainly had an aptitude for jumping in and helping.”
Each person who has gone on these Peru trips takes something different away from the experience, but these Sanford employees say they came back home changed for the better.
“I always come back and feel like I’m rejuvenated,” said Dr. Caron. “It’s a lot of fun. It’s really rewarding. And it feels like you’ve done something.”
“It’s life changing,” said Pink. “It humbles you. It makes you realize in the United States how lucky we are to have modern medicine and everything that we do have here. So it makes you more of an appreciative, grateful person.”
Learn more
- Medical residents go global with Sanford World Clinic
- Sanford health surgeon does mission work in Guatemala
- 6 Sanford nurses will go overseas for global mentorship
…
Posted In Bemidji, Community, Orthopedics, People & Culture
