11 minute read
Student diaries
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Story by
KATIE BRUNNER
Sierra Leone, West Africa
I clutched my stethoscope and a pair of gloves in one hand and gripped the door handle of the Land Cruiser with the other. The makeshift ambulance tore down a washed-out dirt road at breakneck speed, as the medical technician and I raced toward a tiny village in the Sella Limba Chiefdom of Sierra Leone, West Africa. Early that morning, we had received a call from a borrowed cell phone that a pregnant woman was having seizures at a remote midwifery clinic, unstaffed due to a lack of qualified providers. We arrived to find the entire population of the village congregating outside of the clinic, while the tribal shaman attempted to console the patient’s husband inside. I found the patient lying on a cot, listless and barely conscious. She appeared to be at full-term in her pregnancy and had not yet begun labor. The patient’s family, initially suspicious of assistance from an American woman, finally agreed to let me help, so we loaded the patient and her entire extended family into the back of the Land Cruiser and sped to the hospital for an emergency cesarean section.
I knew I was falling in love with obstetrics during my core third year OB/GYN rotation. I was scrubbed in for my first delivery, a twin cesarean section, when I realized I had gotten so excited that I was completely forgetting to breathe. But it was in Africa that I ultimately decided to become an obstetrician/ gynecologist. I spent a month at Kamakwie Wesleyan Hospital in Sierra Leone on what
started as a family medicine rotation but quickly became high-risk obstetrics and gynecological surgery when a volunteer OB/GYN physician arrived from Ohio.
While the rest of the students were keen on treating patients with HIV, malaria and Guinea worm on the medicine wards, I found myself detouring into the obstetrics ward to check on the laboring mothers and scrubbing in on every gynecological surgery possible. It was thrilling to help coach a woman through labor as she realized her dream of becoming a mother or to assist with the hysterectomy of a patient who had been carrying a fibroid uterus the size of a grapefruit, knowing she would finally be able to return to her normal life. I also began to recognize the importance of being a distinct advocate for women, particularly in the culture of Sierra Leone, where husbands gave consent for tubal ligation while women were under anesthesia. Back in the U.S., I have remembered some distinct lessons from Africa: a baby’s first cry is the best sound on Earth no matter what country I’m in, and with every patient I have the chance to make a lasting difference in her life, both through prevention and treatment.
WVSOM’s International Rotations have included:
Guatemala Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Bolivia Net herlands
Germany
(military rotation)
Poland
I tal y
(military rotation)
Republic of Georgia
Sierra Leone
Ghana
Uganda
Zambia
Mozambique
Sout h Af rica India Bangladesh
Cambodia
Sierra Leone, West Africa
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Story by
JENNY LEE Emotions are raw when death is imminent, for there is no promise that one will survive until tomorrow.
Medicine, however, brings hope in the face of death and disease. Each day brought new challenges and with each challenge, we were tested in our ability and endurance. We brought our knowledge, skills and a willingness to have a relationship with these people. In return, we felt their love, experienced their beautiful culture and we were given hope.
If they need hope that the burden of disease and suffering can be alleviated, which was given in service and in the promise of a sustained relationship with them, then what would we as future doctors need to hope for? As future doctors, we hope that our knowledge and skills will reach far beyond our own personal satisfaction, beyond the small circle of people that are easily reached, to the people of greatest need. Hope sustains us so that we may overcome our needs, enabling us to be woven into each other’s lives, strengthened by what we give to one another despite great difficulty. This is what we have been called to do: to love, to help, to heal.
I have never been in a place of greater need than when I was in Sierra Leone. When I say need, I mean physical, bodily needs such as food, water and medicine. What we were able to bring was medicine, but what has grown out of the relationship between the people and the medical missionaries there is something more long term, something that gives enduring strength. It is the idea of hope.
I will come back to how hope grew, but for now let me say what was already thriving: Love.
What the people did not lack was love. I saw many acts of love and generosity in the face of suffering and poverty.
How did I see love? I saw families taking care of a person for months while they were in the hospital, cooking every meal and serving it to them, then sleeping night after night on the cement floor. I saw people share their food when there was not even enough for one person (let alone two or three) — and all this when they probably could not remember the feeling of fullness. I saw grandmothers caring for their grandchildren (their mothers had not survived childbirth or had died of disease), wrapping them carefully in layers of cloth and swinging them onto their backs. I saw children gathering water for their families. I saw people who got hurt laboring for their loved ones. I saw tears of joy in the eyes of a new mother and tears of despair in the loss of a new life.
South Africa
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WVSOM students in South Africa meet with representatives of Médicins Sans Frontières International (Doctors Without Borders).
WVSOM student Morgan Bowling hand claps with an orphan in South Africa.
Helping the young
WVSOM student Tim Wolff feeds one of the orphans at Heavens Nest Children’s Home in Western Cape South Africa.
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Sarah Nasir is the young woman in the red hijab/head scarf toward the back row. Her rotation was to Bangladesh.
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Story by
SHAWN WEEKS
Cambodia
In December 2012, I was blessed enough to travel to Southeast Asia, to the nation of Cambodia with my wife, Michelle, to do a family medicine rotation. I worked with an American doctor serving there while my wife provided physical therapy at the small regional hospital we were working in.
Cambodia is a nation that lies between Thailand and Vietnam. The natives, the Khmer people, and others of this nation underwent great suffering and tragedy comparable to that of any other affliction in human history. During the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge, a group of radical communists took over the government of Cambodia for a five-year period, promising to bring equality and end government corruption. Instead, this group terrorized the nation by evacuating all of the cities and forcing nearly everyone to work on rural farm communes. The Khmer Rouge exterminated nearly all of the educated, most of those affiliated with any religion, as well as all trade and skilled workers. They also executed anyone suspected of disagreeing with their philosophy or actions. It is estimated that about 2 million people were executed during this time. Many workers under the Khmer Rouge starved to death because they were rationed one small cup of rice. Although these events occurred more than 30 years ago, Cambodia is still healing and recovering from these deep wounds. Considering these events are fairly recent, I was impressed by how far the people of Cambodia have come since then. The care given by the physicians and other staff at the small rural regional hospital where I rotated is a testimony of the possibilities of the human spirit. I rounded throughout the entire hospital alternating between a pediatric, internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics/ gynecology and an outpatient AIDs/HIV clinic. I lived with, and primarily followed, an American doctor from Michigan, Dr. Mary Brockhert. She has lived in Cambodia and has given compassionate care to the people of the Koh Kong for about 10 years. I observed and learned how to make due with limited technology to both diagnose and treat. I especially learned how the ultrasound can be an important diagnostic tool when other modalities are not available. I had an opportunity to assist a Vietnamese surgeon during an open appendectomy and a Caesarean section. While learning under the physicians, I was able to tie in osteopathic manipulations and even teach some of the physicians some techniques. We also went by boat to a remote fishing village on an island and were able to do a mobile clinic. I was able to see and learn a great deal while at the hospital and learn much about the Cambodian people.
Although the Cambodian people are not wealthy and the hospital I rotated in does not have the latest technology, the people of Cambodia are friendly people and the hospital where I worked provided the best service they could. I learned better how to provide care with what is available and how to compassionately and creatively care for the ill and suffering.
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India
ADELE PLAZAK, SOHAM DAVE
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Story by
RACHEL HOLCOMB
El Seibo, Dominican Republic
On March 10, I departed for El Seibo, Dominican Republic, for a thirdyear international rotation, something that had been a goal of mine since my first year of medical school. Having been twice before to the Dominican Republic with PAX, the cultural and international medicine club on campus, I had been exposed to the disparities that existed there and was excited for the opportunity to work there for a month. While there I worked with a project called PACES, which provides medications, alimentation, gardens, filtered water and basic support to 102 patients with HIV/AIDS. My main role was to visit these patients at home and identify things that were needed, as well as provide mental and emotional support. In the visits to the patients, we provided general medications to disperse as needed — antibiotics, vitamins, analgesics, anti-parasitics and anti-allergics. Many times we had to drive up to an hour to get to the bateys (sugar cane villages) or communities where these patients lived, which gave me a feeling for how long they have to walk many times just to get to the hospital.
Being a part of all these things provided me with valuable experience that I feel would have been hard to get elsewhere. Sometimes because of the immense problems in the health care and public health system, it was overwhelming and I felt as if the small amount of work that I was doing wasn’t going to make a difference at all. However, I soon realized that what might be a small thing to me was something very meaningful to the patients. In addition, I know that the observations that I was able to make about the health care problems in the hospital and region in which I worked will be used by the organization, Community Service Alliance, to better support and provide health services in El Seibo. This rotation only served to reaffirm my passion for international medicine and public health. I hope that this rotation in the Dominican Republic continues to be one that students pursue, as I feel that there is much to be done, and there is so much that we can do even just as students.
