Growing up I was blessed to go on a couple medical mission trips with my family. My dad worked as an orthopedic surgeon at the hospitals while the rest of the family helped out with random tasks around the hospital. The first trip we took was to Haiti. There were so many things about that trip that really stuck out to me because it was the first time in my life that I was surrounded by extreme poverty. There are some vivid memories I still have from the hospital experience including counting pills and putting them into bottles for patients (why they trusted my brothers and I who were all younger than age 11 to do that I don't know...) and organizing medical charts (again- not a task they should have trusted us little kids with). I remember teaching some young female patients how to make bracelets which was hard to do because they spoke haitian creole and I obviously didn't but it was a great learning experience for me and I think the patients were very happy to have an activity to keep them busy in the hospital. I also remember handing a young girl a gift of her very own pink mirror and seeing a huge smile spread across her face. We had asked our friends, family, and church to donate items that we could take to Haiti with us. The mosts distinguished memory I have from the experience is holding a 4-month old baby that weighed only 5 pounds and was very ill. The baby was found on the road abandoned and severely malnourished and was then brought to the hospital. There weren't enough nurses to hold the baby throughout the day so I was able to spend several hours a day holding her during the two weeks that we were there. At the young age of 11 it broke my heart to leave her because I was unsure of what her future would hold. I wanted to bring her back to the States with me so badly. The wonderful end of that story is that we were able to keep in touch with the hosital in Haiti and they told us a year later that the baby was adopted by a family in Canada ; )
On our St. Lucia medical mission trip I got to do a little bit more work. We went when I was 16 and that was when my interest in physical therapy was starting to begin so I actually got to hangout with some of the physiotherapists and I also got to watch a "surgery". The surgery was the grossest one I've seen up to this date (I've seen around 10 between PT school and watching my dad) because the knee was infected and was the size of a watermelon so my dad cut an incision and the pus squirted out for over five minutes while my brother standing next to me almost passed out at the sight.
These experiences overseas have shaped me in so many ways. I have thought of them very frequently over the past eight years. I unfortunately have been doing a lot of school the last few years so I haven't been able to participate in more of these medical mission trips that my family has taken to Bolivia, Ecuador and Honduras but I've always been brainstorming when I can go again.
I thankfully have been able to be apart of other short term mission trips which have been very positive experiences (high school and college winter/spring break and summer service trips) but everytime it's made me want to use a "skill" other than building houses and running VBS programs. Those things are both great and necessary but I always knew I wanted to use medical skills abroad to help others.
Throughout PT school there were numerous times that I wanted to drop out because I just wanted to go overseas and help people. It was a consistent statement I would make on a long night of studying, "Krissy, I don't want to do school anymore. I'm going to Uganda to work at an orphanage." Thankfully, her along with my other friends and family encouraged me to keep trucking along and now I get to go on a medical mission trip where I get to use my skills and knowledge to help others. I cannot even begin to state my excitement for this experience! Stay tuned because there are several blogs to come on what my role in Kenya will look like.
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