Doctor helps kids with asthma at summer camp
June 22, 2003

BILL FARRELL
Observer-Dispatch

Dr. Martin Masarech spends most of his vacation time with his wife and children, but there's a week every August that he devotes exclusively to other people's children.

It's not a typical vacation. He's on duty 24/7 making sure the kids stay healthy.

The 44-year-old physician from Greene, in Chenango County, is the resident physician at a camp that the American Lung Association of Mid-New York runs for youngsters with asthma. He volunteers his time.

The camp is located just north of Old Forge on 400 acres of land that for most of the summer goes by the name Adirondack Woodcraft Camp. But every third week of August, the lung association rents the campsite and it becomes known as Camp Superkids.

It's one of many camps that Operation Sunshine, a charity of the Observer-Dispatch, supports each summer by raising funds to help defray costs for needy youngsters.

This year, with the help of various partners like the lung association, Operation Sunshine is trying to raise $55,000. As of Friday, $40,004 was raised. The campaign ends July 18.

Those who attend Camp Superkids do what all youngsters who go to a camp in the woods do -- nature trail hiking, swimming, field sports, singing around camp fires, arts and crafts and more.

They also participate in an asthma education program conducted by Masarech and a staff of nurses and respiratory therapists.

These kids are no strangers to labored breathing and wheezing. At camp, surrounded by the pollen and the dust and the mold that at any time could trigger an attack, they are taught how to properly take their medications and do their breathing exercises.

"You watch these kids learn the signs of what triggers an asthma attack and how to manage their own disease. You watch them perform better and better," said Masarech, who's entering his 19th year at Camp Superkids.

Masarech is not a lung specialist, he's a family physician. But his sister grew up with asthma, so he knows what kids similarly afflicted go through.

Born and raised in White Plains, he went to Albany Medical School and was doing his residency at Wilson Memorial Hospital in Johnson City, near Binghamton, when he first got involved with Camp Superkids in 1985.

Part of the residency called for community service during the summer. Masarech could have gone to a camp for healthy kids but figured there wouldn't be much there for a doctor to do.

At that time, the lung association had a satellite office in Johnson City and was looking for a doctor for its new camp in the Adirondacks.

"It was perfect. It's a working vacation for me," he said.

"He's an absolutely super guy," John Storey, executive director of the lung association, said of Masarech. Campers see him riding his bicycle back and forth to various sites on the grounds there and consider him just one of the staff.

Storey said the doctor "has an attitude and personality that puts them at ease and makes them feel good. It's a labor of love for him. He's making a difference."

For Masarech, the goal is simple: To make the kids feel normal.

"Some never get out of their house, and many of their parents are scared to death of asthma. But at camp, I've watched these kids grow up, learn how to manage their asthma and have fun."