Putting People Back Together

A specialist in cosmetic and facial plastic surgery, Dr. Jewel Greywoode has served on nearly a dozen trips with Samaritan's Purse, performing complex procedures and training medical residents at World Medical Mission's partner hospitals.

He treats each patient like a member of his family, whether he is reconstructing the jaw of a man in Cameroon or performing a nose job at his practice in North Carolina. That's why the surgeon was taken by surprise a few years ago when one of his simple acts of compassion turned into a celebrity moment.

In June 2020, Greywoode removed benign bone growths called osteomas from the forehead and bridge of the nose of a 29-year-old woman in Charlotte. When the patient awoke, she realized someone had neatly plaited her hair to keep it away from the incisions. She assumed it was the handiwork of the operating room nurses.

However, at her post-op appointment, the woman was astonished to learn it was Greywoode who did the braiding. He told her he has two young daughters and he washes and braids their hair. His sister taught him. He has done it for other patients too.

“I just did what I normally do and braided her hair. In my surgical fellowship training we always braided the patient's hair,” he said. “I could tell that she had spent a lot of time on her hair and that she would want it placed back where it needed to be.”

Deeply moved, the patient expressed her gratitude to Greywoode on Twitter. The post quickly went viral with more than 70,000 retweets and 580,000 likes. His moment in the spotlight included an appearance on a national medical television show.

Greywoode was a bit overwhelmed by the response. It's true that he sees his patients as more than numbers. But his dedication to them goes far beyond that sentiment. He sees each of them as people with souls, people who have struggles and emotional hurts that only the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, can heal.

Empathy for the Brokenhearted

Compassion for others often finds its genesis in personal adversity, and for Greywoode that certainly holds true.

The eldest of five children, he was born in Nigeria and came to the United States at the age of 6. His parents grew up in Sierra Leone.

“As a third culture kid, where you call home is always a complicated question. I felt more American around Africans but I felt more African around Americans,” he said.

His father, an electrical engineer, and mother, a math teacher, modeled hard work and the importance of making a difference in the lives of others. In his late teens, Greywoode developed an interest in medicine. He was particularly drawn to surgery but didn't settle on otolaryngology until his third year of medical school at the University of Florida.

“As a surgeon, I decided I wanted to put people together instead of taking them apart,” he quipped.

The third year of medical school was also when he met Ashley, a vivacious girl from California who was studying to be a physician's assistant. They married in 2006, then headed to Philadelphia for him to begin a five-year residency in head and neck surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

During their sojourn in Pennsylvania, the couple rejoiced over the births of two daughters, Audrey and Vivienne.

The family moved again, this time for Greywoode to do a one-year fellowship in facial plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Minnesota. By now Ashley was homesick for California and urged her husband to look for work there. He applied and accepted a position at a hospital in Los Angeles. The job would officially begin upon completion of his fellowship in September 2012.

In August, they decided to take a family road trip from Minnesota to California to explore the West by car. It was a sightseeing trip of sorts before the actual move.

As they were driving through South Dakota, a rear tire on their SUV blew out, causing the vehicle to careen out of control and flip into the median.

“The girls were in their car seats in the back. They didn't have a scratch on them. I was in the driver's seat and had a punctured lung and other injuries,” he recalled of the nightmarish event. “But Ashley, who was seven months pregnant with our third daughter, succumbed to her injuries. So did our baby Evelyn.

“Suddenly I was a widower and a single dad with two little girls, ages 3 and 2.”

It was the darkest time of Greywoode's life, but he kept his commitment and began the new job in Los Angeles that fall. He says he would not have gotten through that tragedy had it not been for Ashley's parents helping with Audrey and Vivienne, as well as his parents who relocated to California to live with him and the children.

A Time to Heal

After two and a half years there, the still grieving physician moved back to the East Coast to take an academic job at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He had always been passionate about teaching and enjoyed training young surgeons in reconstructive surgery techniques.

However, there was a gnawing in his heart that he could no longer push aside. “All through medical school and residency, I had a desire to use what God had gifted me with for a bigger purpose,” he said. “I didn't know what that would look like. I didn't have a set plan.”

While attending a medical conference, he had a conversation with an ENT surgeon who shared stories of going to Kenya with World Medical Mission to perform cleft lip surgeries. The surgeon invited Greywoode to accompany the team on their next trip in 2015. He decided to give it a try.

“I was stepping into something that I had wanted to do for a long time, something that Ashley and I had talked about making a part of our lives,” he recalled. “Now I was finally getting the opportunity, but I felt a sadness that she wasn't there with me.”

“He sees each of them as people with souls, people who have struggles and emotional hurts that only the Great Physician, Jesus Christ, can  heal.”

This was the first time Greywoode had been back to Africa since childhood. He served for nine days at AIC-CURE International Children's Hospital in Kijabe, Kenya, and enjoyed the experience so much that he returned there with World Medical Mission in 2016 and 2017.

During the 2017 trip, he met another World Medical Mission volunteer, Emily Clontz, who was a speech therapist from Charlotte and had served as an overseas missionary. They became fast friends.

“By the end of the trip, I was sure that I really liked her,” he said.

They continued their friendship in the U.S., although spending time together wasn't easy with a nine-hour drive between Baltimore and Charlotte. It also took time for Emily and Audrey and Vivienne to get to know one another.

The couple dated for a year and married in September 2018. Their family eventually settled in Charlotte, where Greywoode joined a surgical practice. That was in the late summer of 2019, and the following year he received national exposure through the hair braiding story.

Prior to the pandemic, he and Emily had begun serving on other medical team trips with Samaritan's Purse, some together and some separately. Since then they have made six trips together to Liberia, South Sudan, and Guatemala.

Trusting God's Plan

In Liberia, he worked with and was highly impressed by African attending surgeons who had received training through the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS). Again, God began to stir his heart.

“PAACS has the infrastructure for training national surgeons in a way that is Gospel centered. Emily and I realized that PAACS was going to be instrumental in what I felt God was calling me to do, which was to teach African surgeons.”

Greywoode received another gentle nudge from the Lord through Drs. Charles and Angela Barrier, who are friends from his church in Charlotte. They recommended he consider a short-term trip to Mbingo Baptist Hospital in Cameroon. The Barriers served there through World Medical Mission's Post-Residency Program.

In January 2023, he traveled with the Barriers to Mbingo, where he met Dr. Wayne Koch, another ENT surgeon who travels to the hospital frequently on short-term trips. That exploratory excursion turned into an opportunity for Greywoode to employ his expertise in a free flap reconstructive procedure on a patient who had a large jaw tumor.

“I took a piece of leg bone and tissue, transplanted it to the patient's face, and reconstructed the jaw. So I put the patient back together after Dr. Koch took him apart,” said Greywoode.

Koch has become a mentor to him, and the two surgeons returned to Cameroon in November 2023 and again in March 2024. During the most recent trip, Koch brought a Togo-born surgical fellow who was receiving training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“I looked around the OR during one surgery and there was the Johns Hopkins fellow, who is a first-generation African-American, and me, a first-generation African-American, the PAACS residents, and Cameroonian staff,” Greywoode said. “So it was an all-African team, where teaching was happening, where surgery was happening.”

Greywoode does not know what the future holds, but he clearly feels that Africa is a big part of it, whether through continued short-term trips or a longer commitment. Audrey and Vivienne are now in their early teens. When they are a bit older, he would like them to experience Africa too.

“Emily and I met in Africa. Africa is where God keeps taking us. We are keeping our hands and hearts open to see what He is going to do.”

“Africa is part of my story. In some ways, it's a little bit like going home,” he said wistfully. “Emily and I met in Africa. Africa is where God keeps taking us. We are keeping our hands and hearts open to see what He is going to do.”

The couple plan to travel with Samaritan's Purse on cleft lip trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia this year. Wherever they serve, Greywoode praises God for the opportunity to teach and to be an example of His love to the next generation of African surgeons.

“As a black surgeon in the U.S., and as a black facial plastic surgeon in the U.S., I am a minority,” he said. “It's even more of a minority to find an African facial plastic surgeon in Africa. I would like to change that.”