In three days, I board a plane for Africa.
Three days.
58 hours.
3490 minutes.
209,400 seconds.
Now 209,399 seconds. Now 209,398 seconds ... (Who's counting? Not me.)
You're wondering, so I'll answer: no, I am not fleeing the country, no, I have not gotten in trouble with the law, and no, I am not in much danger of catching Ebola.
To help you understand how it came to be that on Friday November 1 at 9:10 AM I will be stepping foot onto a plane headed to Africa, let's flip back the pages in the calendar and rewind the hands on the clock
878 days.
52,680 hours.
3,160,800 minutes.
189,648,000 seconds.
Now 189,648,001 seconds. Now 189,648,002 seconds...
Picture me. In college. An idealistic teenager and gung-ho premed, I wanted to become involved in giving back to the community. Short on money, I did have time, and decided to volunteer some of it, preferably somewhere in the medical world.
So I signed up at Exalta Health one fateful day in June 2017.
(Exalta Health is a faith-based medical clinic that serves an underprivileged, mostly Hispanic population in Grand Rapids.)
Over the years I've volunteered there, my key role is to help out Exalta Health's medical director, Dr. Laura VanderMolen, with the less glorious side of being a doctor. Picture the electronic equivalent of mountains of paperwork, and you'd have a pretty good idea of what my time volunteering looks like ...
To give you a quick character sketch, Dr. VanderMolen is a lively and energetic lady with frizzy black hair, a wicked sense of humor, and a huge heart for medicine and missions. In the two years I've volunteered there, she's never failed to regale me with an amusing anecdote or book recommendation, most of which are medically or social-justice geared--all part of her master plan, I suspect, to brainwash me into becoming a missionary doctor.
Anyway, another person of particular interest in this story is Dr. Joel Green. I'd brushed by him only a few times since, as a busy general surgeon, he could spare at most one day a month to visit Exalta and perform minor surgical procedures. When I did get to know him a little better, I was fascinated to learn that he only spent 8-9 months each year practicing surgery in the US. He then spent the other 3-4 months in Africa (Africa!) performing surgery for people in desperate need and with zero access to the sort of surgical expertise taken for granted in American hospitals. To give you a quick mental picture, he is a man with dark brown eyes who exuded a sense of calm, peace, and gentleness that I hadn't seen in the surgeons I'd met thus far, who in my experience tended to be a more frazzled bunch.
I talked about him for weeks -- what a way to combine the rigors of modern medicine and the calling of medical missions!
Behind my back, Dr. VanderMolen asked him if he'd be willing to take a youthful premed (that'd be me!) along, which he was evidently quite amenable to. When she broached the idea to me, I promptly fell off my chair in excitement and bought tickets the next day.
(Just kidding--but I was stoked.)
So there you have it. And just as Dr. VanderMolen helped engineer the path for me, possibly more out of a desire to live vicariously through me than from disinterested altruism, so I plan to pen a few more posts during my stay so that you may, if you choose, travel with me this November to the landlocked republic of Rwanda.
More to follow in ...
7 days.
168 hours.
10,080 minutes.
604,800 seconds.
Now 604,799 seconds.
Now 604,798 ...
Three days.
58 hours.
3490 minutes.
209,400 seconds.
Now 209,399 seconds. Now 209,398 seconds ... (Who's counting? Not me.)
You're wondering, so I'll answer: no, I am not fleeing the country, no, I have not gotten in trouble with the law, and no, I am not in much danger of catching Ebola.
To help you understand how it came to be that on Friday November 1 at 9:10 AM I will be stepping foot onto a plane headed to Africa, let's flip back the pages in the calendar and rewind the hands on the clock
878 days.
52,680 hours.
3,160,800 minutes.
189,648,000 seconds.
Now 189,648,001 seconds. Now 189,648,002 seconds...
Picture me. In college. An idealistic teenager and gung-ho premed, I wanted to become involved in giving back to the community. Short on money, I did have time, and decided to volunteer some of it, preferably somewhere in the medical world.
So I signed up at Exalta Health one fateful day in June 2017.
(Exalta Health is a faith-based medical clinic that serves an underprivileged, mostly Hispanic population in Grand Rapids.)
Over the years I've volunteered there, my key role is to help out Exalta Health's medical director, Dr. Laura VanderMolen, with the less glorious side of being a doctor. Picture the electronic equivalent of mountains of paperwork, and you'd have a pretty good idea of what my time volunteering looks like ...
To give you a quick character sketch, Dr. VanderMolen is a lively and energetic lady with frizzy black hair, a wicked sense of humor, and a huge heart for medicine and missions. In the two years I've volunteered there, she's never failed to regale me with an amusing anecdote or book recommendation, most of which are medically or social-justice geared--all part of her master plan, I suspect, to brainwash me into becoming a missionary doctor.
Anyway, another person of particular interest in this story is Dr. Joel Green. I'd brushed by him only a few times since, as a busy general surgeon, he could spare at most one day a month to visit Exalta and perform minor surgical procedures. When I did get to know him a little better, I was fascinated to learn that he only spent 8-9 months each year practicing surgery in the US. He then spent the other 3-4 months in Africa (Africa!) performing surgery for people in desperate need and with zero access to the sort of surgical expertise taken for granted in American hospitals. To give you a quick mental picture, he is a man with dark brown eyes who exuded a sense of calm, peace, and gentleness that I hadn't seen in the surgeons I'd met thus far, who in my experience tended to be a more frazzled bunch.
I talked about him for weeks -- what a way to combine the rigors of modern medicine and the calling of medical missions!
Behind my back, Dr. VanderMolen asked him if he'd be willing to take a youthful premed (that'd be me!) along, which he was evidently quite amenable to. When she broached the idea to me, I promptly fell off my chair in excitement and bought tickets the next day.
(Just kidding--but I was stoked.)
So there you have it. And just as Dr. VanderMolen helped engineer the path for me, possibly more out of a desire to live vicariously through me than from disinterested altruism, so I plan to pen a few more posts during my stay so that you may, if you choose, travel with me this November to the landlocked republic of Rwanda.
More to follow in ...
7 days.
168 hours.
10,080 minutes.
604,800 seconds.
Now 604,799 seconds.
Now 604,798 ...
So excited!!!
ReplyDelete