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Home My Public Portal AboutGauss, Dr. BradfordVIcCall dentist treats Ukrainian youths Sidf- Newer, May $,/qq� BY JEANNE SEOL The Star -News Brad Gauss usually keeps his emotions in check, but the retired McCall dentist broke down after treating 600 children who had been abandoned to orphanages after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. "I'm not a person who cries and I usually keep my feelings inside, but that night I went home and cried," Gauss said. "I had never seen conditions that bad for children in all my 30 years of practice." Gauss made the trip in March to Ukraine - one of several newly independent countries that once made up the U.S.S.R - as part of a medical and evangelical team organized by the Wenatchee Free Methodist Church in Wenatchee, Wash. "I knew it wasn't going to be a vacation, and after being retired only a couple of months, I wanted to play golf and fish," Gauss said. "But there have been seven or eight times in my life when God has hit me over the head and made a change in my life. This was one of those times." Before making the trip, Gauss met seven others, including Marilee Donivan of McCall, in Wenatchee for a two-day preparation course. There, they talked with Ukraine natives, learned a few Ukrainian phrases and prepared themselves for what they knew would be a hard trip. But none of them knew what they were facing, Gauss said. A week after arriving, the head doctor suffered a heart attack and had to be flown to Vienna. Another team member suffered an emotional breakdown, while another became so fatigued she wasn't able to do her job. "Our purpose was to get the Christian message to the Ukrainian people and to treat their medical needs, but it also gave all of us a whole new view of the world," Gauss said. Every team member paid for the trip out of his or her own pocket, and Gauss took along his own dental equipment. That equipment was almost confiscated by soldiers at the Ukraine border. Most of it became useless 30 minutes after he arrived because his compres- sor blew up and his dental chair wouldn't work. So he relied on back-up supplies for the entire 16-day trip. He treated more than 600 children living in orphanages that in the middle of a Russian winter had no heat, no electricity and no hot water. Gauss never saw one child even wearing a coat. Most of the children had never seen a dentist and Gauss said he was only able to do "band -aid" work for orphans whose every baby tooth and adult tooth had decayed to the gum line. "I had never seen anything that bad," he said. Most of the children living in the orphanages were victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Gauss said. Most had seen their parents die after being sent to clean up the ex- posed area, and some had suffered birth defects from radiation. Others were mentally retarded and had been sent to the orphanage because their parents could not afford to care for them, he said. "The average doctor or dentist there makes about $125 a month and a teacher makes about $145 a month, but no one has been paid since last October," Gauss said. "It is a country trying to be capitalistic, but they have , no idea how capitalism works. They're used to being paid by the govern- ment." Gauss said he met people who had never before seen the outside world before the Iron Curtain was lifted in 1992. • "They never even knew what the rest of the world was, and now that they know, they look at the wealth of the United States and believe money is their savior," Gauss said. "Crime is on the increase and there is a real disparity in the people." In large cities like Rivne, popula- tion 300,000, electricity is only turned on two hours a day. People eat mainly potatoes, beets, rice, peas and some beef and chicken, and live in small apartments, or flats, with several other family members, Gauss said. While staying in the Ukraine, Gauss said his accommodations were well above what many people had. He and his team slept on cots in a camp built in the 1940s by German occupa- tion troops. In addition to treating orphans, Gauss said the most valuable part of the trip was teaching a Russian dentist about American technology. "Their dentistry is 50 years behind ours," he said. "They use no antisep- tic to do fillings and what they do have is primitive, so I spent much of my time teaching a Russian 'dentist who worked by my side." Despite the hardships endured dur- ing the trip, Gauss said he would return. The team took with them 14 boxes of antibiotics and left behind dental equipment, but Gauss knows they need more. "A Christian should be a Christian at home as well as everywhere else in the world," he said. "The kids need clothes, the doctors need equipment and antibiotics. We're going to do what we can." Photo Courtesy Dr. Brad Gaus Dr. Brad Gauss instructs Russian dentist Allah Ponomaryova during treatment of a Ukrainian child.