Dentist travels overseas to care for those in need

Dentist Marshall Horwitz could well afford a watch worth 10 or even 100 times more than the $29 version on his wrist. But he has other plans for that money.

“I"d rather spend it on supplies,” he said.

They"re not supplies for his Worcester office, either. Every two years, Dr. Horwitz, a Holden resident, packs up all the supplies he can afford and joins a group of other medical professionals to donate their time and expertise where it"s most needed, no matter where it is in the world.

The group, an evangelical Christian group called Macedonian Missionary Service, advertised in the Journal of the American Dental Association in the 1990s, and their ad caught Dr. Horwitz"s eye.

Looking back, he recalls it was part of his midlife crisis, to want to make a change that would share his good fortune with the world.

Though Dr. Horwitz is not an evangelical Christian, it hardly matters to the group or to Dr. Horwitz: It"s all about doing good for people who need it.

“I felt this calling,” he recalled. “I have this talent, I"m good with languages. I really want to do this.”

After his first mission to Asia, Dr. Horwitz knew he"d be going back again and again, and prepared himself accordingly by learning Chinese.

“After I went on the first mission, I was so tired of wasting time on translations,” he said.

Knowing some other languages helps him communicate directly with his patients as well.

The magnitude of the need in the places they go is reflected in the numbers served. In Mongolia this year, he saw 119 people in four days, extracting about 170 teeth. In 2010 in Mongolia, Dr. Horwitz and another dentist saw 440 people and estimate they extracted nearly 700 teeth in just over a week.

The trips go on for weeks, usually two or three, sometimes four. Four, he admits, is tough on the group physically, with inadequate food and less than hygienic living conditions.

Under those circumstances, Dr. Horwitz said, the group finds its own source of mental and physical comfort.

“Everybody relies on everybody else for support,” he said.

It generates strong bonds among the more than two dozen medical professionals who travel together.

“The tougher the mission, the tighter the bonds of friendship,” Dr. Horwitz said.
Dr. Horwitz also relies on support from home. His wife, Susan, holds down the fort at home in Holden and supports his efforts.

Sometimes the trips are so exhausting and draining that Dr. Horwitz says they come home vowing they"ll never do it again. But the memory of the intensity of the need and the heartwarming –— and heart-rending — stories of the people they treat keeps them coming back.

When Dr. Horwitz went to Mongolia for the second time in 2010, he found himself working on a man whose face might have seemed familiar. Dr. Horwitz had done some extractions for him on his last trip to Mongolia four years before.

“I knew in my heart you would be here,” the man told Dr. Horwitz.

Hearing such tales, Dr. Horwitz said, takes away the fatigue of standing on one"s feet for hours.

It also makes the difficult conditions more bearable. The conditions that leave large populations with no medical or dental care are not even close to the clean, convenient conditions Americans are accustomed to, but all know that going in.

The response of the population to the group"s help also points to how much suffering goes on before the group comes to help. Anesthetics, for instance, induce awe.

“They think it"s a miracle,” Dr. Horwitz said.

While the cost of going on the trips is high, and he leaves his own Worcester practice to go, Dr. Horwitz is clear that this is exactly how he"d like to spend his money.

“I don"t play golf and I can"t name 10 guys on the Red Sox,” he said with a laugh. “This is what I want to do.”

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