Fun in the Fabulous Philippines

So my adventure began after a long cold drive to Seattle and getting on an airplane way too early in the morning. I was a little nervous as I was going to meet up in Hawaii with a group of people I had never met before. Who knew what kind of “group” of people I would be with for a week and if where I was going really be safe and not end up in some crazy monastery somewhere in the middle of the Philippines nomads land. I guess to preface this predicament every year I try to look in to doing some kind of medical mission trip and wanting to do something different I found an organization online called Project Compassion. Seeing that they had done a number of trips and being impressed by their organization I decided to seriously look into working with them. After much thought and prayer I came to realize that their trip to the Philippines was where I needed to go and so I signed up for the trip. The only problem was that I didn’t know anyone and the only person I communicated through email with was a random lady that was organizing the trip. Needless to say I guess you could call it a great leap of faith but felt good about it even though I had no idea what I would be getting myself into and what type of people I was going to be with. You could imagine my nervousness. Anyways back to the story, so after landing in the Hawaii airport and getting kinda lost I found finally them and they luckily all looked pretty normal and really nice so I was relieved .

After chatting a bit, we then got on the plane for a long flight to Manila. Our team consisted of Cardiologist, Internist, Optometrist, Dentist, peds NP (me), 2 nurses, and a handful of other people to help with the clinic (12 in total). When we got there we stayed the night in Manila and chatted about where we were going, the island of Siquijor. I roomed with a girl who had just joined the team and had been in the Philippines for a couple of months. Apparently according to the locals the Island was cursed and enchanted by evil witch doctors and someone even said vampires. It made for an interesting travel over to the island to say the least, I just hoped I wouldn’t run any witch doctors or worse make one of them mad…..

To get to the island we hopped on a plane to the town of Dumagete and then took a random boat to the island. When we got there to our surprise we were greeted by some awesome Pilipino people and realized that we were staying on a full blown resort that was apparently on the island. To be honest based on past mission trips I assumed when they said “resort” we were going to be sleeping in random cots or in old beds with bed bugs and have a hose for a shower, but boy was I wrong! We had awesome rooms to stay in, great food, 2 pools and an awesome view of an amazing beach! I felt like I had just come to something straight out of a magazine!

The next day we got up super early (meaning 530 am) and ate breakfast. I guess I forgot to mention that the Project Compassion is a Christian organization and there were many of us of different Christian faiths, me being the only LDS person. They sent up all the clinical sites with the local missionaries in the area and we had 2 missionaries on the island working with us. Every morning we sang a spiritual song with a guitar and had a devotional. It fun and a nice way to start the day, I even learned so new random churchy songs . Oh and the mangos were also superb!

Anyways after breakfast we then headed over to our first clinical site. Apparently in the Philippines instead of soccer like most countries being “the sport” they love basketball and have a random covered small basketball stadiums in each town which worked great for clinical sites and that’s where we set up. We had a place for dental, eye, us doctors, and the pharmacy. There were lots of people waiting in line outside when we got there so it was rather intimidating but once we got going it wasn’t too bad. Since I was the only pediatric doctor person I saw lots and lots of kids and their moms. It was fun but kinda sad at the same time because there were lots of unfortunate medical problems. There were tons of scabies and sadly many children with ear drums that were ruptured due to multiple infections. It was funny however, that even in a foreign country the most common complaints were a cough and colds. The kids were fun though and it never ceases to amaze me how a 6 month old baby can be the same happy smiley baby no matter where you go in the world. They also liked stickers, and you’d be surprised how a little sticker can make just about every little kid smile! The Pilipino people were so sweet and there was great joy in being able to help them even if it was in a small way.

After they saw us and before they got to the pharmacy they also went and were prayed for especially if they had difficult medical or emotional problems. I thought this was really cool as I felt like there were so many people that we could not fully heal physically but through prayer maybe their hearts could have been touched and they could feel peace and the love of our heavenly father to heal them at least spiritually and emotionally.

After a day of clinical and we were done, we usually made it back just in time for the sunset which was amazing! I then usually went for a swim and relaxed.

This was basically how the next 4 days went. We traveled to 2 different towns and each day I saw 50-60+ patients, some of which were mildly sick and just wanted vitamins and others that were very sick. When you go to places where there is no health care its always sad to see conditions that you never seen in the states because it was either treated before it got that bad or prevented all together. One condition that was very common there was thyroid issues and goiters, this happy lady was one of the worse I have ever seen. We also saw a boy who had a tumor growing on his leg and within 3 months according to mom this is how his leg turned out. It was so sad.Luckily project compassion had a number of people donate to the organization so they were able to take him to a larger city off the island for testing and hopefully treatment to save his life. What a blessing that was that we were able to help him or at least give him a chance. I also saw a little girl with a possible tumor on her face, guy who chopped part of his pinkie toe off with a piece of wood, and drained 2 abscess one on a 1 yr old kid’s forehead and another on a little girl’s bottom. There were also murmurs I heard and lots and lots of bug bites!

One thing that was interesting about the Philippines is their language they spoke. They spoke Tagaloc which had lots of similar words to Indonesian, Spanish, and they even threw in some English. So I would hear all these random words scattered throughout their language that I recognized and occasionally even English words popped out. It was the craziest thing and kinda nice because I could understand some of it which was great as most places I have been I could not understand anything. Also most signs were in English which was kinda nice as well.

At night on the resort things were always very interesting and you were never sure what was going to come out. One night someone found a huge spider the size of my hand in their room, another person had a huge lizard fall out of a tree right next to them. There were tones of frogs that one of my friends accidentally kicked, it kind made me laugh because I thought it was a leaf but then it hopped away. I also stepped on a crab which scared the heck out of me because it freaked out and ran and I thought it was a spider. I also saw this hermit crab, his shell was the size of my hand he was soo cool!

After we finished clinic on Thursday it was reported we helped about 2000 people, it was awesome! And according to the missionary people about 400 said they were interested in coming to Christ. Although the island was not currently open for LDS missionaries yet, I thought it was soo wonderful that these people were turning to Christ and going in the right direction so hopefully the island will be open to our missionaries someday

When Friday finally came I was exhausted ready to play! Apparently on a random island in the Philippines there is amazing snorkeling! They had a fish sanctuary near the shore of the island and it was awesome, it had tons and tons of tropical fish! We also had little boats to go out farther although I will admit they were kinda sketchy and you could tip over easy…. When we got father out the coral and plant life was remarkable and we saw lots of schools of fish! I wished I had an underwater camera. We then went on a ride around the island up to a huge tower in the center of the island that over looked the island, it was breathtaking and the island was pretty big. We even passed a witch doctor persons house along the way, but luckily she was not out watching us, or so we thought…. The funny thing was randomly out the middle of nowhere on this island by the tower there was wifi, which I thought was awesome, lol. We then went to a waterfall, actually it was 3 waterfalls and it was beautiful. The drive through the island was also grand; it was so green and tropical. Some homes looked kinda crazy on hill sides and on stilts and it made me wonder how they withstood the rain but apparently it has survived thus far so it works, maybe they have some kind of magic...

On Saturday the day finally came that we had to pack up and say good bye. On the way home we stopped for some touring and shopping in Manila and I was glad we didn’t spend too much time there cuz it was crazy! We went on a horse and buggy ride through some historical sites which was really neat, it was cool to see the Spanish architecture. We then stopped by the 3^rd largest mall in the world. All I can say is that on a Saturday its crazy and since I was taller than most Pilipinos all I saw was a sea of black heads of hair.

We then hopped in a plane after waiting 2 hrs in line to check in and flew back to the US or aka Hawaii. Lucky for us we had a 24 hr layover and a hotel by the beach so it wasn’t too shabby ;).

Over all the trip was amazing and I learned a lot! I had never worked so closely with so many good people of other Christian faiths. It was wonderful despite some of our differences that we came together as followers of Christ and served his children. It was wonderful to see that light touch so many of the Philippine people. I am very grateful and humbled that I had the opportunity to use my education to go and serve these amazing people of humble circumstances. What a huge blessing it was and although I did my best to help them I feel they helped me and taught me so much more. I know our heavenly father loves all his children and I could see and feel that as I worked with so many wonderful people. In a world today with so much wickedness, uncertainty, sadness, and pain it was so inspiring to know that there are still many good people in the world. We are so lucky to have what we have, I just pray I did my part and made maybe a little difference in the lives of some of the amazing humble people of the Philippines.