Sunday, August 24, 2008

Gonna be Published!

I'm not sure when, but the Fallon County Times (who's website is totally not working right now or I'd link to it) is going to publish two articles I wrote about our trip to Honduras! If you read the newspaper, don't read the rest of this blog- I'm totally gonna spoil it for you. If anyone has any editorial suggestions let me know since I'll also be submitting these to the monthly Healing Touch publication, Energy Magazine, later this month.

Here's the first article:

Help in Honduras
Part 1
Global Medical Brigades

Day 1: Arrive after traveling for 21 hours. Sleep. Eat dinner. Pack Meds.

Stephan Koruba has a niece named Sahra who is a student at DePaul University in Chicago. In February she called him to share the exciting news that she was going to travel to Honduras to help support rural medical clinics. She also asked if he and his wife Anna would be willing to travel with her. Without much hesitation they both agreed.

They began collecting money, medicine, office supplies, vaccines (for themselves!) and medical supplies to bring along. On June 24th they boarded a flight at O’Hare Airport in Chicago at 2am. By 1pm that same day they were in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. From there, the group of 17 students, one doctor, one nurse and one massage therapist were taken by van to an orphanage about 3 hours Southeast of the capitol.

The first day was full of relaxing and touring the various facilities run by Global Medical Brigades. The hard work started early on the second day. The bus left at 6:30am and drove another 2 hours West. A makeshift clinic was set up in a three-room school: a triage center, treatment center, and pharmacy. In the next 5 hours 750 native Hondurans received basic medical care.

In the next two days the same team of people saw another 800 Hondurans from two different villages, bringing the total up to 1500. Most people came with their entire family. There were mothers with 5-8 children who all had intestinal parasites. Old men brought their grandchildren who had skin fungus. Old women leaned on each other to walk all morning to ask for aspirin to alleviate their arthritis and headaches. There were teething babies with fevers, pregnant women who needed vitamins, men with heartburn, diabetics needing insulin, and heart patients needing blood thinners.

This was the first time in 9 months that any of them had a chance to see a doctor.

No comments: