Faith motivates ‘human carpenter’ to heal others
WEST VANCOUVER—There’s a statue of St. Joseph at Christ the Redeemer Church that Dr. Tim Kostamo likes to pray in front of. It shows Jesus’ earthly father holding an axe and a piece of wood.
As an orthopedic surgeon, Kostamo is inspired by the statue of the sainted carpenter, joking that “I’m essentially a human carpenter” who puts people back together with power tools, screws, and implants.
“I think Joseph would have been an orthopedic surgeon in this day and age,” said Kostamo. “I think he would have liked to have that impact on people, not just on wood.”
Having an impact on people is certainly what Kostamo does. Usually it’s in B.C., performing hundreds of surgeries a year on patients who have suffered car accidents or sports injuries and need hip or knee replacements.
But one week of the year he packs a couple of hockey bags of equipment and flies to Ecuador for a week of non-stop surgery with other volunteers through the Canadian Association of Medical Teams Abroad. The West Vancouver surgeon is working hard to change the lives of the crippled on the other side of the globe and recently returned from a medical mission trip.
“It’s an intense week. It’s exhilarating. It’s exhausting. I cried every day while I was there,” he told The B.C. Catholic. “It’s very emotional when you see these people who are so crippled and they have no other option.”
To work in such a different environment is “exciting and exhilarating in some ways, but also very intense in terms of the kind of work that you’re doing,” he said.
At Un Canto a la Vida Hospital in Quito, Ecuador, he came across people who had not been able to walk for years because of dysplasia or other problems.
“I cried every day while I was there.”
“The hip wears out, sometimes when they’re still really young. They’ll be in their thirties or forties with a destroyed hip and they can’t work or take care of their families,” he said.
This year, he also helped two teens who had been limping since developing hip infections as infants, and a 73-year-old woman who had suffered hip pain for 20 years. Patients came from all over Ecuador, one travelling nine hours by bus just to get treatment at the hospital in Quito.
“I have this incredible privilege of actively intervening in someone’s body and changing their life. It’s awesome!”
Going on missions is something Kostamo has wanted to do since he was young. He grew up the son of Pentecostal missionaries and lived in Eastern Europe from the age of 5 to 18.
Kostamo said his faith makes the healing of others his personal mission. “If it wasn’t for faith, I think I’d be a minimalist and a hedonist. I don’t think I’d be in this career at all.”
When he was 20 and halfway through his undergraduate degree in biology, Kostamo was ready to drop out of school entirely. He found his classes boring and his grades weren’t high enough to get into medical school.
He came across a job ad for a scuba diving researcher in the Caribbean and, having a valid diving license, applied. Due to a computer glitch he never received the offer the employer sent. He took that as a sign.
One month later, still unsure of what to do with his life, Kostamo was attending a Christian conference where he had a “profound spiritual experience.”
With men praying over him, Kostamo said he suddenly sensed the pain of the people in the room. “While I was praying, I could feel, in an expanding ring, people’s suffering. It had a profound effect on me, that I could somehow alleviate that. That motivated me.”
“If it wasn’t for faith … I don’t think I’d be in this career at all.”
Kostamo threw everything into his studies,
earning a biology degree, spending another four years in medical school, taking
five years of surgery training, and specializing in hip and knee treatment for
a year.
During his studies, he went on a medical mission to Africa. Not yet a doctor, he served as a doctor’s aide helping refugees escaping the Libyan civil war. The experience convinced him.
“All I would do is clean out dirty wounds for two months,” he said. “I loved it. Even though a lot of people would find that macabre and disgusting, it didn’t bother me, and the fact that I was doing something practical and good for somebody, I thought it was awesome.” The experience “clinched my desire to study medicine.”
While finishing school and starting his own practice, Kostamo put missionary work on hold for a while. He married a Catholic dentist named Ewa and had four children. Eight years after they were married, he joined the Catholic Church.
While Ewa was eight months’ pregnant with their fourth child, an earthquake rattled Haiti and Kostamo felt called to return to missionary work.
He joined an emergency response team and worked for 11 days in a tent next to a school that had collapsed with 40 children inside. He spent every day washing wounds, amputating crushed limbs, and even helping a child whose head had been scalped by a falling brick.
“It’s very stressful because you don’t have any backup,” said Kosamo, and yet he found it rewarding.
Two years ago, he went on his first medical mission to Ecuador with Canadian Association of Medical Teams Abroad. He hopes to return annually.
He and 44 other doctors, nurses, surgeons, anesthesiologists, and lay people, most of them Christian, come from Vancouver, Vancouver Island, and Edmonton to serve in Ecuador.
The volunteers all pay their own travel expenses. “Having a direct impact on people’s lives and their health, my faith is the foundation for that,” he said. Otherwise, he suspects, he’d take the funds he spends on medical missions and would “go to Mexico, to the beach.”
