Being a Nurse

I spent last week translating for and working with American plastic surgeons, and it was amazing.

Perhaps the best part about the whole experience is that I felt like I was actually helping people.

The purpose of this medical mission was to correct cleft lips and palates (many children are born here with this genetic defect in which their lips or palates aren’t fully fused, inhibiting speech, eating and breathing, not to mention affecting their appearance) as well as to reattach nerves, tendons, and skin on patients with machete wounds or burns so their joints may once again have complete functionality. 

I’ve never been a part of a medical team before, so of course, there was a learning curve.  I had to learn how to maintain a sterile environment in the operating room by wearing appropriate protective materials and refraining from touching surgeons, their equipment, and the patients.  They spoke a language I didn’t understand, but my job was to communicate their ideas to the patients and to make the patients feel more comfortable.  Surrounded by English-speaking, surgically dressed doctors, the patients were uneasy.

It felt great to take care of people.  I stood with children and comforted them as they went to sleep via anesthesia.  I was there when patients were waking up after surgery.  I did what I could to make them feel better.

Yet there were some people we couldn’t help, and we had to turn them away, regrettably. 

Through this medical mission, I also experienced the health care system here.  While we treated our patients as they would have been treated in the U.S., we had to witness the treatment of patients in other rooms.

Before this mission, I had never entered a public hospital.  I remember my first impression of the public hospital in my town.  On my first day in site, one of my community members drove me around town and we went to the parking lot of our town hospital.  The premises looked eerie –there were no cars in the parking lot and no one coming in or out of the hospital.  Certainly this was not like an American hospital.  I asked my friend about the hospital’s appearance, and she said, “Oh no, no one ever wants to come here.  There are never any adequate supplies or personnel.  People come here to die.”  That really struck me; people don’t go to our hospital to get well, but they go there to give up.

Therefore, if you want proper care, you must go to a private clinic, which offer services that the average person can’t afford.  When people have a severe accident, they are forced to go to a public hospital.

So flash forward to last week, and the first time I had entered a public hospital, a TRAUMA public hospital at that.  The conditions at this hospital were depressing.  The last of its kind in Santo Domingo, this hospital was always busy with emergencies, with few resources and overworked doctors and nurses.  And I saw some things I never expected to see.

Though the work we did last week was draining, I considered it very fulfilling and life changing.  The Friday after the week’s surgeries was designated as a clinic day in which we changed the bandages and examined the patients to see how they were healing.  The bus pulled up to the hospital that morning, and there was a crowd of smiling, happy patients, waiting outside.  I lit up as I recognized a man, and I waved at him (later on, he gave me a chocolate bar to thank me for helping him.).  Everyone was so grateful for what we did, and I just felt so good inside.  I was really humbled.

I had connected with people.