If You Hit Bone

With all the garage sales finished, it was time to get serious.
This was going to be my first medical trip.
I am not a nurse, but I could be if it wasn't for this sickness of laughing when people get hurt.
Not really a great combination, in my opinion, for those in need and in pain.
It was decided that it was time for lessons on giving shots.

To this day, I can still hear my friend Maryann saying, "if you hit bone you will need to pull back".
What!!
Bone?
Wait, hold on just a minute!
I didn't sign up for this, I couldn't imagine!
I still can't!
Those words still haunt me to this day.
There would be no laughing coming out of me on this trip.

Never in a million years was I remotely prepared for what we would see.
Thinking back, it wasn't the "bone part" that was hard to deal with it was the whole picture.
There was a disconnect happening for me.
These words wouldn't just apply one person, there where hundreds of them.
They walked for hours to come to clinic, desperate for medical care.
A zone with 50,000 people and no medical care.
At some point medical training didn't seem to be all that important.
No text book or training prepares you for the things you see.
There would be no time to process what was happening.
That would have to wait.
In my journal I wrote...
This was the closest thing to hell I have ever seen - I don't know how here and have any hope for life.
Row after row of tin shacks, person after person going to the bathroom on the street.
The smell, so much trash piled in the streets.
It is a picture that will never leave my mind.
It was like a dream and I can't imagine that there is a place anything like it on earth.

It was Wednesday, October 18, 2000, my life would never be the same.

From that point on I ended up in wound care.
I guess my first "hitting bone" experience was enough.
It can not be a rational thought because wound care was so much worse.
Elephantitus, burns, Leprosy, cysts, scabies, ring room....