Back in those first days — it was three years ago now — they hung a sign advertising open-screening days. If you are poor with no health insurance, come on in, is how they put it.
At 6 a.m. on screening day, about 150 people were lined up outside the front door.
When you are giving away free surgeries, that kind of thing can happen.
The next year, they did it the same way. Two hundred people were in line at first light.
This year, everyone chosen for the Surgical Day of Giving at Pueblo Surgical Center will be referred by a physician.
It will be easier this way. And besides, an awfully large number of doctors these days know patients who once could afford their services.
Three groups, Health4Haiti, International Surgical Missions and Colorado Technical University, will partner to provide free surgeries Oct. 9.
Those selected will come from the medically uninsured in Pueblo, a city with 9.8 percent unemployment, 18 percent uninsured and 40 percent considered overweight and in poor health.
“It is the working poor we are after,” says Cameron Allen, an organizer of the event and program chair of Colorado Technical University’s surgical technology program.
It will be people, he said, who’ve long put off medical care because of the cost.
In the first year, the program provided 57 surgeries. Last year, the number fell to 51. This year, he said, the number could be the highest ever.
We are not talking open- heart or lung surgeries here.
“It can be anything, really,” Allen said. “Gall bladders, hernias, that sort of thing. We’ll see a large number of noncancerous growths, what physicians call lumps and bumps, things that look like a marble under the skin.”
Nine surgeons have volunteered their time for the day, he said. In total, nearly 100 professionals, from nurses and various technicians to administrative staff and medical students, will volunteer.
Pueblo Surgical Center is donating equipment and the bulk of supplies needed, he said.
A group of surgeons came up with the idea for the free surgery day three years ago. They were in Mexico on a trip with International Surgical Missions, performing free surgeries for the poor there, Allen said.
“The thought arose that if we can do this here for the poor and needy of Mexico, why couldn’t we do the same thing back home?” he said.
ISM is a nonprofit, nonsectarian group that was started in 1996 by two young physicians who wanted to use what they had learned by helping the poor in other countries.
A surgical first-assistant and technologist by training, Allen has assisted on nine overseas trips, including three this year, in the Philippines, Ecuador and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
He takes each trip on his own vacation time and pays the full cost of going.
“It is something I do in recognition that I have a very fortunate life,” Allen, 35, said. “And I have an employer kind enough to indulge this desire to give back.”
It is why he has worked both free surgery days and will work the third next month. It will be a day that starts at 6 a.m., and likely will not finish until 9 p.m.
“It’s not just me,” he said. “It is everyone involved in the program. We have certain skills and believe you have to give back in this life.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
