Strathmore pharmacist shares medical skills in China

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Stan Riegel, a Strathmore pharmacist who lives in Rosebud, went on a medical mission to China in November. Riegel and his son Tim, a plastic surgeon, and about 70 other Canadian volunteers worked with the organization EMAS (Education, Medical Aid and Service).
This was Riegel’s fourth trip to China with EMAS, providing medical aid to disadvantaged people. China has excellent medical care available, he explained, but many Chinese citizens can’t afford to pay for it.
EMAS had rented space in three Chinese hospitals, and in each hospital they placed a volunteer surgical team. Stan and Tim Riegel worked at Boya Hospital, in Kunming, in Yunnan province. Each team included a plastic surgeon, other surgeons who worked as surgical assistants, anesthetists, pharmacists, nurses and general helpers who provided meals and other support. The volunteers also brought from Canada all necessary medications and supplies, which had been donated by doctors, pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies.
Tim Riegel and the other two plastic surgeons performed 57 surgeries in five and a half days. Riegel’s role was dispensing medication, typically antibiotics and pain control, before and after surgery.
Waking at 6 a.m. and working to 8 or 9 p.m. every night made the days long, Riegel said, but the greatest challenge had been getting there.
He and Tim had flown into Shanghai, but they were rerouted to another city because of fog. There, they sat in the plane for six hours before flying back to Shanghai, then traveling to a different Shanghai airport, where they finally flew out to their destination city. Riegel’s largest suitcase had been misplaced, and it didn’t arrive until three days later.
But those challenges were far outweighed by the reward of “being able to contribute to the change in someone’s life,” he said. “Life-changing surgeries. Many, many to make [people] functional.”
In one surgery, they treated a man who’d lost part of his arm and part of his mouth when he was electrocuted. The surgeon performed a radial forearm flap, taking a piece of muscle from the man’s forearm so he could be given a lip.
“As a result of that he was able to speak,” Riegel said. “He was able to eat again. And the interesting thing, what caught my eye, was that he had the brightest smile in his eyes. This radical transformation had taken place.”
In another surgery, a little girl had a black growth called a hairy nevus removed from her head, after already having a hairy nevus removed from her cheek.
A mother and her young adult son had surgery to remove growths called neurofibromas, the mother’s on her face, and her son’s on the back of his head.
Another man, who’d been burned in a motorcycle accident when his motorcycle was transporting cans of gasoline, had yet another surgery in a series of several surgeries.
Other burn patients included a young brother and sister whose heads and hands were burned when their house caught fire. They’d received as much treatment as their parents could afford, ending with partial finger amputations. The EMAS surgeons cut between the stubs on the children’s hands to give them a pincer grasp. “These kids … they’ve adapted,” Riegel said. “They can have all kinds of fun throwing a ball around or whatever. But now that they’ve done [this surgery], they can hold a pencil or grasp things they couldn’t grasp before.”
It’s rewarding to know that people’s lives are completely changed, he said.
“You see a result for somebody who gets a lip back so they can function somewhat normally, or gets a deformity taken off her head,” he said. “Or this hairy nevus. You can imagine if you’re having this black thing on the side of your face, you walk down the street and everybody’s looking at you.”
The greatest thing he brought back to Canada, Riegel said, is this perspective: “Volunteering a little time and talent, I could take my abilities here and use them in another country, in this case to China, to make a difference for somebody.”