Flight of the Sparrows

Anna Ter Zakarian, medical student at USC Keck School of Medicine, during a mission trip in Armenia with Armenian EyeCare Project alongside Dr. Roger Ohanesian.

BY ANNA TER-ZAKARIAN

My childhood heroes wore colorful capes, flew across the sky and saved damsels from buildings with superhuman strength. They were mighty and of the magnitude of legends. With the imaginative faculty of girlhood, I was intoxicated by the charisma of the extraordinary. But as I grew older, my concept of the hero changed. I began to see brilliance in the ordinary, in the smallness of personal moments, and in vulnerability.

I am now in my third year of medical school, and I have since seen many who lead bravely through service. This summer in Yerevan, for example, I witnessed a quiet, but heroic luminosity in the coming together of American physicians Dr. Roger Ohanesian, Dr. Rick Hill, Dr. Thomas Lee and countless others as part of the Armenian EyeCare Project (AECP) ”“ a humanitarian nonprofit founded in 1992. I had joined their mission trip with expectations to merely fulfill a rotation requirement for my medical school; what I found instead was the ordinary unfolding into the extraordinary. Though they didn’t wear capes, there was a compelling heroism in the silent power of a few doctors hoping to make a small but meaningful difference.

One powerful interaction I witnessed involved a young and graceful opera singer named Gohar Nersisyan, age 35, who was nearly blind from congenital glaucoma. During previous missions, Dr. Hill and Dr. Ohanesian performed many intricate surgeries to restore her sight. On this occasion, she required yet one more, which was performed by Dr. Hill and Dr. Lilit Voskanyan. I learned much from their technical acumen, but I was most moved by their language of empathy and compassion as they listened to Gohar’s story and patiently addressed her concerns. From the corner of the room, I studied their tone and rhetoric as they lifted the weight of her fears through words ”“ an ancient form of healing that transcends physical medicine.

I heard similar echoes of wonder as Dr. Ohanesian spoke of Gohar. “She has a fantastic voice. When she sings, everything goes quiet. Now that she has sight, her potential is incredibly”¦”