The rain came early and hard. The thunder and lightning came next. It went on all night and stayed in the morning. No one cared. They came for a reason and everyone who had a reason got what they came for.
It looked like Chechnya or Bosnia, maybe Slovenia or one of any number of what used to be called third-world countries before the economic world was flat.
More than 8,400 people stood in line, camped in thunderstorms and waited patiently for medical care. 3,731 teeth were pulled. 2,191teeth were filled. Eye specialists gave away nearly 1,000 pairs of glasses. It was ghastly and wonderful all at the same time.
Tents stretched farther than a football field and every building was full of people getting medical help as if a disaster had descended on the mountains and lured this mass of humanity to seek relief from people who actually cared about them. I have never seen so many dentist chairs, so many mobile care units, so much blood willingly shed as oral surgery was performed under tarps. This was 100 times bigger than M*A*S*H and twice as heartbreaking.
People came hundreds of miles, and some drove thousands, to see a dentist, surgeon, doctor or eye specialist. For most, it would be their one shot in a year to get help. Some of the problems were so serious that when the doctors were finished, the patients walked away with mouths packed with crimson gauze where their teeth used to be. The helpless sat side by side and never complained. They were courteous, kind even. They waited their turn. I can see them when I close my eyes – people in need, looking for help.
If you saw the images, you’d swear this was somewhere far away, overseas. But this is America, land of the free and the home of the uninsured. More than 50 million Americans have no health insurance, and almost 10,000 of them came to the fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia, to get help from The Remote Area Health Clinic and hundreds of volunteers.
When you see something this gut-wrenching, it makes you realize that poverty doesn’t end with a job these days. Most of the people here had at least one job. Some had several. Some were in wheelchairs. Medically, all had nowhere else to turn.
Dee Briggs and I wandered amongst this amazing effort to help people get the medical help they need. We talked to countless people who were wracked with pain and suffering and yet never let on. We saw more than 1,300 volunteers give at least $1.36 million worth of medical care over a single weekend. If you are a cynic, seeing acres of people with nowhere else to turn will carve a notch out of your hard-boiled shell.
Presidential candidate John Edwards came for a short visit before the teeth-pulling and gum-cutting began. He was shocked by what he saw and heard. He was touched, too. He should have hung around until Friday and Saturday and Sunday. In fact, every candidate for President of the United States should see what Dee and I saw in Wise last week.
Or maybe they’d rather not be that close to the ugly reality of how all too many patriotic Americans have to live these days. But these citizens do vote. And their numbers are growing.
Maybe a weekend in Wise would inject some wisdom into a red-state/blue-state campaign where American taxpayers have to see a dentist or have surgery in a tent during a rainstorm. Maybe seeing medical teams and health care providers working hand in hand in the bloody mud of the Wise Fairgrounds would help them understand that the economic boom hasn’t reached more Americans than you may want to believe. Maybe it would give some of the campaign rhetoric a timbre of truth.
If you find yourself looking for a worthy cause at tax time, by next year, about 20,000 people could use your help.
NOTE: Thank you to the many people who volunteer for this effort every year, and to the Virginia Health Care Foundation and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and VCU and the University of Virginia and the countless others I know were there but won’t get the names correct. Thank you mostly to The Remote Area Health Clinic of Wise, Virginia, which put this entire event together.
There are a lot of bad things happening in this world today. For three days in Wise, however, something very good happened. I was honored to be there.
