Making Third-World House Calls

Call his compassion an accident of birth. Dr. Justin StormoGipson does.

“We as Americans think we work hard, get what we deserve,” the 43-year-old Coeur d’Alene ophthalmologist says. “Ninety percent of it is the luck of where you’re born.”

Justin crafted this theory providing medical care to the masses in Nicaragua, India and Guatemala on and off for eight years.

“Living with them gives you a deeper appreciation for their struggle and also an appreciation of what you have,” he says.

A visit to Nepal with his wife, Maj, in the 1970s steered Justin into medicine. They were college students. In Nepal, they visited an English nurse who’d offered all of the health care in her remote area for 25 years.

Inspired, both StormoGipsons entered medical school, then headed to Nicaragua with a Presbyterian Church Peace Corps-type program. They took along their daughters, ages 8 months and 5.

“Having children was great,” Justin says. “It helped us assimilate. Kids play with other kids.”

For two years, the StormoGipsons cared for the general population. Justin coordinated tuberculosis treatment in the area. An overall lack of transportation complicated everything.

As the StormoGipsons became fluent in Spanish, they began teaching people hygiene to fight diarrhea and parasitic diseases carried by contaminated water.

“We loved it there,” Justin says. “It was time we could just be family together. We had regular hours, lived two blocks from the clinic. The kids were thriving.”

After they returned to the United States, Maj specialized in pediatrics and Justin in ophthalmology.

“We wanted specialties that could take us back to Nicaragua on a regular basis,” Justin says.

Since 1991, the two doctors have volunteered their services in Nicaragua for a few weeks annually. They’ve also taken time to share their skills in India and Guatemala.

Justin trains other surgeons as he works on children with crossed eyes and wandering eyes.

“Life revolves around what kind of job you can get down there,” he says. “Kids grow up with crossed eyes, people think they’re retarded. They can have better lives.”

As long as Nicaragua needs him, Justin will go.

“I love it. I gain a lot of satisfaction,” he says. “And it’s good for me. It helps me keep perspective in my own life.”

Pile power

Coeur d’Alene’s Terri Porcarelli has her own beloved dog, so she’s not about to condemn anyone for playing with Fido along Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Dogs aren’t allowed on the woodsy beach in front of Terri’s Fort Grounds home. Still, they’re there occasionally, and often leave stinky mementos their owners, for any number of reasons, don’t clean up.

Instead of getting angry, which isn’t Terri’s style, she got smart. She and her son, Brian McCrea, invented a plastic bag dispenser from an upside-down plastic milk jug.

Artistic Brian designed a label with a finger pointing at a “pile” behind a dog. The label says, “Poo Bags. We love Sparky too, but not his poo.”

They stuffed the milk jug full of bags people can pull out through the spout and strapped it to a tree with plastic cord. The dispenser hangs over a trash can.

Terri would like to install a few dispensers along the Centennial Trail but is waiting for approval.

What a great idea. Runners in the Coeur d’Alene Marathon last week had to dance around a pile negligently left on the trail. Someone needed Terri’s dispenser - or a modicum of courtesy.