From acting as a doctor to doing the real thing

She left off acting as a doctor for a television pilot in Los Angeles and then went to Tanzania where she helped perform real medicine as an assistant to doctors for patients, many of whom had never seen a doctor.

Lisa Pevc arrived home last night from the 5-day clinic. With a team of 27 doctors, nurses and laymen, Lighthouse Medical Missions (LMM) attended to an estimated 1,800 patients in Mwanza, on the southern shore of Lake Victoria.

One young lady was just days from death due to an abscess that came from a dirty hospital needle – from sloppy Third World medicine, Pevc said. An LMM nurse cleaned it out twice in two days and administered a bunch of antibiotics, saving her life, Pevc said.

Dr. Bob Hamilton, the Santa Monica pediatrician who founded LMM 17 years ago, treated two toddlers with pneumonia, saving their lives, she added.

“Considering that I’ve never played a doctor ever before and then all of a sudden I was cast as one and then went over to Africa and started helping with medicine, it was pretty ironic,” Pevc said. “Participating in this mission was right up there with the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life.

“Our team doesn’t think that any of these kids have ever seen a doctor beyond the six month checkup,” Pevc said. “The kids wanted to be around all the time. We couldn’t understand them because they speak Swahili. We just hugged them and played with them and threw balls with them and played soccer. They tried to teach us Swahili words, and we tried to teach them English words.”

Every patient was treated for worms and parasites. A Christian charity that coordinates logistics with local churches in Africa, LMM takes thousands of dollars of medicine with them to hand out freely wherever they go. Since each team member pays his/her own airfare, food and lodging, virtually 100% of donations go directly to medicine and food disbursed to some of the neediest people on the planet.

This was their 23rd mission to Africa.

LMM takes just basic equipment, so diagnoses depend on field analyses. Dr. Hamilton diagnosed malaria by feeling the hardened spleen on a child, Pevc said.

As an assistant, Pevc dispensed meds and wrote prescriptions for a fellow volunteer to dispense form the makeshift “pharmacy” in the clinic.

Today, Monday, Pevc gets in contact with her director to go see if she can go back to acting as a doctor.