For the past fifteen years Dr. Lawrence has traveled the world, helping people in distress who have little or no access to medical care, and responding to some of the most devastating medical emergencies in recent memory. She traveled for years to the Ukraine after the Chernobyl accident, bringing crates of chemotherapy for radiation victims. She has worked with Doctors Without Borders, and volunteered at clinics in remote Mexican villages. After the devastating 2005 tsunami in Thailand and Shi Lanka she worked with five doctors from far corners of the world, and without speaking a common language worked tirelessly to treat innumerable patients streaming through their tent.
Dr. Lawrence was also one of the first responders to arrive in Haiti after the horrific 2010 earthquake. Working with her hand-picked team in a makeshift outdoor clinic, she spent sleepless weeks treating hundreds and hundreds of victims of gangrene, fractured limbs, electrical burns, dehydration and dysentery. Here’s her account of this exhilarating adventure:
“We were essentially the very first medical team to reach Haiti after the horrible earthquake in early 2010. We were told we couldn’t even get there, because there were no flights, and were warned it was too dangerous to proceed. Our flight was the first to reach Haiti, other than military flights, and we landed in the middle of swarms of people. We were immediately mobbed by hungry refugees needing food, water, and medical care. I started seeing patients right in the airport, before we could even get to the parking lot. Later we set up our ‘clinic’ under a tree outside of the tent city. We had mercenaries with rifles helping to keep us from being mobbed by desperate people. I started treating gangrene victims, people with fractured limbs, second and third-degree electrical burns-- there were lots and lots of babies who would have died without medical intervention.Dr. Lawrence currently holds hospital privileges at several hospitals in the area. She is always available for consultations at her office in Seal Beach.
I received much more from this experience than I ever gave. It was such a privilege to be able to help these people through this terrible ordeal. I feel like I was given the opportunity and the gift to be able to respond-- trained in the medical skills that in many instances, saved lives. It really gets to you, when you save somebody’s leg. Or you know that this mother still has her baby, or the baby her mother. If I hadn’t been there they wouldn’t. Because there wasn’t anyone else to help them.”