You Get What you Give

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Happy Easter to all! Whether or not you spent the day in church or with family or both, I felt this was a day that the generosity of a few donors should be highlighted. While planning for this trip, my friend Erika, who rotated at Mulago before me, described the state of need at the hospital and how any and every donation would help. Thanks to her advice (thank you Erika!), I began e-mailing a few people in Wisconsin. With just a few simple e-mails and some incredibly salient advice from my mom, I received an enormous response. By the time I returned from my internship in Washington D.C. I had several boxes of gloves, masks, inhalers, suture material, suture removal kits and irrigation supplies to donate. (A special thank you to Riverside Medical Center and specifically Mr. Craig Kantos and my mother for pulling all these together!) Furthermore, one of my preceptors, Dr. Ben Duffy (sorry if you wanted to remain anonymous, but you needed to be recognized!) even met me at the airport on the day I was leaving to donate an army bag full of trauma supplies and two beautiful otoscopes and ophthalmoscopes. Erika also played a huge role and somehow got a box of glucometers to Des Moines so I could also take these with me. When all was said and done, somehow the donations fit perfectly into my two suitcases with all my clothes (okay, it took a lot of sweat and tears for this to happen, but Jim and I got it done). 

Upon arriving to Mulago, I discussed with my coordinator that I had donations. After counting them, organizing them and hauling them to the hospital, we made a plan of action. I would donate most of the gloves, suture material and catheters to the gynecology department (they always get the shaft on supplies so I felt the need to spread some girl power), and the rest would go between the emergency department, internal medicine and pediatrics. After donating a huge box to a very appreciate gynecology department, my coordinator and I headed down to the emergency room/casualty ward. There we found the head sister (aka charge nurse). When I showed her the masks, glucometers and bandages she literally jumped for joy. She started dancing, I started laughing and immediately the supplies I brought out seconds before started being used by the residents. She could not believe she had not 1 but 2 new glucometers for her department, and she had suture supplies and TB protective masks for her residents. 

Mid dance party to celebrate her new supplies!

 After seeing the rest of the supplies we had, she immediately directed us to the sister in charge of the casualty ward. Here we donated more glucometers,  masks, gloves and trauma supplies. Upon opening the trauma supplies and intubation kit from Dr. Duffy she gave me a huge hug with tears in her eyes. She said to me, "You don't even know how much this will help, most of the time we work on patients blindly and don't have the supplies to properly assess and resuscitate them, these will help so much. God bless you." Following this wonderful reception, we went up to the endocrine ward and donated the rest of the supplies to another sister who again kept repeating "God bless you" with tears in her eyes. I really had no response to their reactions and only could smile, shake their hands and say "Kaale, kaale" (You're welcome/it's fine in Lugandan). Somehow, even after donating all these supplies, I still felt that I was gaining more from the experience than they were.

Thank you Dr. Duffy and Erika for the trauma supplies and glucometers!!

Checking out her new intubation kit for the casualty ward

Thank you again for all your support and donations. Many of you have reached out and expressed your interest in donating, but truly I was not able to carry anymore with me so please don’t feel slighted. Shipping to Africa is very unreliable, so I could really only ask for what I could personally take with me. However, I am trying to work on a way for others to donate money if they would like and will keep you updated on this. Even if you haven't physically donated something yet, I need you to know how much I appreciate your incredible support of my journey here. I can’t tell you how much this has helped me adjust to life here. Furthermore, your interest and donations have helped me feel that this journey is not completely selfish on my part. While we all benefit from learning together and learning about each other, I feel overall that I am benefiting exponentially more from this experience than the my generous Ugandan hosts are. That being said, I do feel that by the donations I brought and by sharing these incredible people’s stories, I can somehow return some of the favor. So thank you for helping me give back by reading about my experience here and by generously donating supplies for this hospital that desperately needs them!