The early events of Dr. Donny W. Suh’s life sound rather dramatic. He grew up poor in Seoul, South Korea. One day, he told his mother he wanted to be a doctor. She said it would be as difficult for him to become a physician as it would be to grab a star from the sky.

“I told her I didn’t just want to be a doctor; I wanted to be a doctor who really helped people,” Suh said. “She said, ‘That is more difficult. I’ve never seen one.'”

His family’s financial woes left many doctors unwilling to help them. Suh wanted to help others in similar situations. That said, he does not want to sound melodramatic and he doesn’t want to be pitied. Those long-ago events are merely a part of what brought him to the medical profession and inspired him to travel the world offering medical services to those less fortunate. He is quick to point out that many Iowa doctors donate their time and efforts at home and abroad.

When Suh was 13, his family moved to America. He grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and got his undergraduate degree from Rice University in Houston. He received his medical degree from the Baylor College of Medicine, and completed his residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. That’s when his wife, Susan, fell in love with the Midwest. He then served his pediatric ophthalmological fellowship at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center in Baltimore.

When Suh completed his schooling, he and his wife decided to return to the Midwest because they though it would be a good place to raise a family. One of his professors in Milwaukee had joined the Wolfe Clinic and recommended it to Suh. The clinic, established in Marshalltown in 1919, has operated on more than 100,000 cataract patients through the years and has offices and clinics throughout Iowa.

Just last month, Suh undertook a medical mission to Nagpur, India, with ORBIS, a non-profit global humanitarian organization dedicated to eliminating avoidable blindness. ORBIS sends ophthalmologists around the world to perform medical procedures and train doctors. The organization has completed 440 missions in 80 countries, giving instruction to more than 50,000 health-care workers who provide treatment and training in their countries, according to the ORBIS Web site.

“The goal is to help eye surgeons (in disadvantaged nations) learn new techniques and become self-sufficient,” Suh said.

This was Suh’s third medical mission abroad. His first was in Chile six years ago with Surgical Eye Expeditions International. His second mission was to Peru. The main difference between those missions and missions with ORBIS is that the SEE missions focus on surgery, whereas the ORBIS missions focus on teaching, Suh said. With SEE, he got to know his patients better on a one-on-one basis. With ORBIS he got the opportunity to pass along his knowlege in the hopes it might spread exponentially. He’s already planning a future trip with ORBIS to Bolivia.

It’s not easy for Suh to leave home. He has a wife and three children, ages 5, 3 and 1. Overseas travel can be dangerous, he says, and one must adjust to different languages, foods and customs, which is hard to do on a 10-day mission. In India, for example, patients would attempt to kiss Suh’s feet. He was at a loss as to how to respond. Before he knew it, he was returning to Iowa, his family and the Wolfe clinic, where half of his patients are children and half are adults with strabismus, or a misalignment of their eyes.

Despite Iowa’s low Medicare reimbursement rates and shortage of first-rate Tex-Mex restaurants (which Suh says are the state’s biggest faults), there’s nowhere Suh would rather be.

“The patients here are great,” he said. “They’re very appreciative. I have a great support staff with a great work ethic. This is a dream come true.”