Home

Got home last night. Incredible that you can waste two entire days for a two hour flight! The last week of Project Hope I though I would never get home, but once home it was like I had never left.

What a great experience! I knew before I left that I would be touched by the patients who live in daily povery, that there would be days I would cry for the patients who did not have access to services that we not only expect, but demand immediately. For example, I met a gentleman who had been hit by a car while riding his motorcycle. He fractured his left hip, femur, and tibia. His hip and femur were repaired surgically, but his tibia was left displaced and dangling. Five years later he could not walk, you did not need an xray to see the fracture, and he would move the bones back and forth for you when you could not believe what you saw. Without work he does not have insurance or cash to pay for the surgery, without a working leg he cannot work. Stories such as this are plentiful in Central America.

What I did not expect was to meet so many wonderful people on board the ship. People from all over the world with a lifetime of stories to tell. People with accomplishments and resumes full of exciting adventures and accomplishments. It was so fun just to sit down and chat and exchange stories and information. The physicians and NPs on board the ship not only challenged each other to obtain a higher degree of competence; but they challenged me, an NP student they will never see again, to reach up and out across the world to gain the most out of work and out of life. As role models the raised my expectations of myself as a student, a professional, a friend, and a mother.