These past few weeks my team has been working with a Medical Missions team from Lee University in Tennessee. Every morning we meet them at their hotel, make our sammies for lunch, then head to the site where we’ll have the clinic for the day. Every time we show up to the location the building is packed with people waiting to be seen. The pastor of the church in the area usually hands out about 200 tickets to the community to be seen. The days usually last about 8 hours.
The first few days were a bit hard for our team. Considering we’re not doctors, we had to find other ways to help out. I guess you could call us the evangelism team, we pray with the patients and play with the children, however it was hard for me because I felt like we were just there to support the medics. Once we finished praying, we would have to find another way to help out. It was just hard because we felt like we weren’t doing much (even though I know praying with the patients is extremely important) plus we were really low on energy so that didn’t help. Eventually we started to get into the swing of things: handing out vitamins, parasite pills, assisting the triage doctor with his equipment, etc.
Now that we’ve been doing it for a few days now, we are having a lot of fun and have much more energy. Medical Missions has really made me appreciate the medical attention we get in America. The people here aren’t just sick, they’re diseased, dying, paralyzed, they’re worse than the worst-case scenarios that our doctors tell us about. They get this way because the only medical attention they receive is from Med Students. We pay thousands of dollars to see doctors and these people get seen by the Med Team if they’re lucky to be selected for the 200 Patients to be seen for the day.
Their teeth are a completely rotten because they aren’t able to receive dental care either. When the patients arrive, they have infected teeth and the only way to fix the problem is to literally yank them out. One lady the other day had 9 teeth extracted! And they’re awake and given a local anesthetic. Its so hard to hear the children get their teeth extracted because you can hear how much pain they’re in. I’ve been put ‘under’ every time I’ve had teeth extracted, I seriously cannot imagine the pain those patients must feel.
