Over the years I have met literally thousands of plastic surgeons.

One of my favorites of all time is Dr. Hirji Adenwalla. He is one of India’s very best cleft surgeons and he has spent the last 60 years helping the poor in the jungle in southern India.  

I used to call them the Mother Teresa of clefts because of how selfless and dedicated he was to helping the poor.  

I met Dr. Adenwalla on one of my very first trips that I took as president of Smile Train.  This trip was grueling –  our country manager Satish was taking us to every corner of India.  What made matters worse was that this trip took place one month after 9/11. 

The last thing I wanted to do was to travel during that time as I had a newborn baby at home and a one-year-old. We were living in New York City and our apartment had been evacuated because it was a couple blocks from Empire State building and the authorities feared that that might come crumbling down also.  Everyone was fearful that more attacks were on the way.

But these arrangements have been made months in advance and I really felt I had to go.  We had many partner hospitals that had planned significant patient events around our visits and they were expecting us.  I had to go.  

Dr. Adenwalla in the state of Kerala which is in the south of India.  He is the  Founder of the Charles Pinto Center for cleft lip and palate at the Jubilee mission hospital which was aptly titled the poor man’s hospital  — because treatment for the poor is always for free.

 Dr. Adenwalla was in his mid-70s when I met him but full of energy and a very determined, unwavering commitment to helping the poor.

 I remember we arrived late and they had hundreds of Muslims waiting in a large auditorium for our arrival.   The crowd consisted mostly of mothers and their babies and children who had already received cleft surgery or were about to receive it. 

It was Ramadan so they were all fasting and the babies were all crying because they were hungry. It was awkward to say the least so soon after 9/11. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Muslim before in my life. And now I was expected to give them a short speech.  It was quite a surreal experience.

 I don’t remember what I said that day.  I’m sure it wasn’t a very good speech.  But I do remember afterward wading through the crowd and shaking hands and holding babies and connecting with those mothers and their children.  

Suddenly it didn’t matter at all if they were Muslim and I was Christian.  We were all smiling and celebrating the fact that hundreds of babies and children born with clefts now had not just new smiles but a second chance at life.

The mothers kept thanking me for the Smile Train program which had provided free surgery for their child.  I kept telling them they should be thanking Dr. Adenwalla and his incredible team of doctors and nurses.

Dr. Adenwalla and his wife Gulnar had been living at Jubilee Hospital and helping save lives for more than forty years.  How they ended up here is really an amazing story.

 They were both born into a very wealthy, educated families in Mumbai.  But after medical school,  Dr. Adenwalla wanted to devote his life to being a medical missionary in Africa.  The only thing that stopped him was his love for Gulnar.  You see even though she was willing to go to Africa for parents put a stop to the idea.  That’s when Dr. Adenwalla changed his plans and decided to help the poor of India instead of the poor of Africa.

Gulnar learned about a small missionary hospital in Southern India that desperately needed a doctor. Together, in 1961, they decided to get married and then as husband and wife, move South to this hospital and help the poor.

 They came to the right place.  The hospital was tiny with just a dozen or so beds, a poorly equipped operating room and a skeleton staff of two nurses.  There was no radiologist so Dr. Adenwalla had to take his own x-rays. There was no anesthesiologist so Dr. Adenwalla taught his wife how to do it.  

Soon they were overwhelmed with patients and providing all kinds of care from childbirth to C-sections to cancer, broken bones,  trauma from car crashes,  you name it.   Most days, hey would start work at six in the morning and quit  around midnight.  It was frustrating, exhausting and depressing but neither one of them would have traded it for anything.

Because this is what they wanted – to live intentional lives, lives with meaning and purpose.  They didn’t want to make money, they wanted to make a difference.

 They couldn’t have been farther away from Mumbai where they would’ve lived in a big house and Dr. Adenwalla would’ve had a big job making lots of money at the best hospital in India.

The life they were living here, in a house with no running water, built right next door to the hospital, where you could hear all the babys crying at night while you are trying to sleep, this meant much more to them.

The Archdiocese who funded the hospital gave Dr. Adenwalla the power and discretion to treat any patient he wanted for free. For Dr. Adenwalla,  this extraordinary benefit took money completely out of the business of being a doctor.  

Instead of money as a reward, he received the gratitude of patients whose lives he had saved.

After a decade of hard work and sacrifice, Dr. Adenwalla and Gulnar built Jubilee Mission Hospital into a respected teaching hospital with an expanded staff and a training program for surgeons.  This gave Dr. Adenwalla the opportunity to focus on what he loved: plastic and reconstructive surgery and specifically cleft surgery.

Dr. Adenwalla loved cleft surgery because the results were so dramatic, immediate and permanent.  

A lot of plastic surgery procedures improve appearance or function a little bit whereas a cleft surgery can provide an astounding transformation.

I remember on missions sometimes we used to give babies with clefts back to their mothers sometimes after just an hour away in the operating room and the mothers would say no, you’ve made a mistake, this is not my baby.

They didn’t even recognize their own child an hour after cleft surgery!

After I gave my speech  and we spent half an hour or so meeting with happy patients and their grateful mothers, Dr. Adenwalla gave us a tour of his hospital. 

It was still being managed by the diocese so there were many nuns in white saris running around and large quotes from the Bible on the wall.  

Yet,  90% of the population surrounding the hospital was Muslim. We asked about this and Dr. Adenwalla said religion has never been much of an issue here at Jubilee Mission. That was nice to hear.

We followed Dr. Adenwalla from bed to bed as he examined patients and comforted anxious mothers.  He had the most amazing bedside manner with his big smile and spectacles on the end of his nose,  he always knew exactly what to say.  You could tell he had been doing this a long time.

Dr. Adenwalla told us how grateful he was for Smile Train’s support.  But he shook his head and said with a smile, “ I’ve been doing this for work for 40 years, I wish you had come along a little sooner.”   

It made me wonder just how many more years he had in him.  The thought of him retiring was very depressing.  Those would be very big shoes to fill.

 After our tour, we went back to his house and had some tea and lemonade and biscuits on his porch.  His house is right next to the hospital. In fact, as we were sitting there talking and the sun was going down, you could hear babies crying in the hospital.  When he and Gulnar lie in bed at night, they can hear everything that is going on at their hospital just steps away. 

That tells you all you need to know about Dr. Adenwalla and his wife Gulnar.

Dr. Adenwalla told us a lot of amazing stories that night. But one really stuck with me.

It was about a mother who brought her little boy with a cleft to his hospital years ago.  He could tell by her lip that she had had a cleft also but it had been fixed years earlier.  This happens all the time because clefts definitely run in the family.

The woman sat down in a chair with her little boy in her lap and began to cry.  She told  Dr. Adenwalla that she was the fifth child in her family and she also was born with a cleft.  She explained the great lengths her parents went to to try and get surgery for.  Altogether, she underwent five surgeries that cost her family of fortune.

To pay for her surgery, her father had to raise money by selling his land, his farm, his house, his cows, etc.  He lost everything.  

Including his wife who passed away  of a rare disease while all of this was happening.  Her father ended up working as a day laborer for less than a dollar a day and soon died just like her mom.

The woman explained that even though she had been born with a cleft and had suffered through five brutal surgeries with mediocre results, she was able to marry and have four healthy children.

And then she had a fifth child – and he had a cleft just like her.

She recounted how her cleft had destroyed her family, killed her mother, and her father. And why she vowed to never pay for surgery for her son as she never wanted his cleft to destroy everything that she had worked so hard for now.  

And then she heard about our Smile Train program – and that surgery was free for the poor. This was like a miracle – the answer to her prayers. Her son would now receive surgery and a second chance at life.

Dr. Adenwalla told us that we had no idea of the enormous impact our program was having.

How it was transforming children and saving them from a lifetime of pain and heartache. 

How it was transforming mothers who were ashamed and embarrassed of their children,  hiding them under their saris. But after surgery,  left hospital with big smiles on their faces and holding their children up with pride for all the world to see.  

And how it transformed the surgeons as well.  He explained that of all the surgeries he ever performed, cleft surgery was by far the most powerful and rewarding.

“People thank me all the time for saving their child and changing their lives,” he said. “ What they’ll never know is just how much they’ve changed mine.”