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.

Hawaiian Adventure

Hello friends so as many of you know I just recently when to a trip to Hawaii to see my brothers graduation and as this happens to be a blog about my adventures I figured I will just have to of course tell you all about it :). So we got to Hawaii Thursday morningish and when we got there I will admit it was a little drier than I thought it would be. I guess since the only islands I have been to are the ones in Indonesia I figured they would be similar but not so, it was still nice and a happy place though of course! Our group consisted of my parents and Crawford grandparents and we stayed in a cabin in Laie that was pretty awesome because it was pretty big and all you had to do is take a little like 30 yard trail to get onto pounders beach. Once we got settle in me and my dad headed off to “look at the beach” but of course when we got there we jumped in and body surfed for a little while. After I got sand in just about every place possible we decided that boogie boarding was probably the way to go and went and got some. Although I felt like it didn’t make too much of a difference with the crazy sand it was pretty awesome. One time I got caught in a crazy wave and it basically spun me all the way around, my dad said he could see my feet sticking up straight out from the water, it was a rather “exhilarating” experience to say the least, lol.

While in Hawaii we did a lot of cool different thing. On Friday we drove up to the Pearl Harbor memorial and that was a really neat place. It was a very humbling experience to go through and pay respect to those who lost their life that day. It gave me once again a new respect, gratitude, and love for my country and the freedoms we have. Saturday was Drew’s graduation and it was pretty fun! Sister Dalton spoke at it and she gave an amazing talk. Afterwards we went to Teds Bakery for some amazing coconut chocolate pies for my brother graduation BBQ we had with his friends. While there I got a coconut muffin and it was pretty much amazing! That night we decided to go to Waimea beaches to swim but then ended up stopping at pipeline because the waves were crazy!! When I was younger I had thought that some of the Oregon cost waves were big and couldn’t imagine anything much bigger even though I had seen the pictures. But man these waves were amazing, 20+ feet high! One guy even broke his surf board. My brother said that that they are rarely that high during this time of year and they mostly come in the winter, so I felt lucky. Sooo cool! Pictures cannot do them justice at all!! And the sunset was like icing on the cake. On Sunday we went to church and I think my dad was inspired because we went to the same ward as Sister Dalton and the BYUH school president. Also to our surprise the main fire dancer guy from the PCC show was there and he gave his testimony. It was a pretty cool meeting to say the least. That afternoon we went on a drive around the “other side of the island” and went up the mountains to an amazing lookout. It was beautiful!! The following Monday we got up, ate at Ted’s bakery again, hehe and drove out to a place to go snorkeling. I can’t remember the name but if you have ever been there, I’m sure by the picture you’d know where I was talking about. My cool grandma got in the water with us as well and I even got  to see a turtle!  After that we went to Waikiki and ate at cheese cake factory and then strolled down the town. We didn’t see the Kardashians but some people came awful close to looking like them, lol.

 

 

 

That night my brother got one of his favorite meals, ahi poke that came in the little blue paper dish thing that chicken comes in and said “cook thoroughly” on the packaging but my brother insisted like a million times it was ok and so I tried it. It actually wasn’t too bad, but would I eat it again? probably not. Good news is I survived and thus far no worms that I know of, yet.. On Tuesday we took a trip out to the middle of the ocean to go swim with the sharks. Like most normal person I was rather nervous when we got to the spot and the guy threw out a bunch of meet and the sharks jumped around and chomped the meet. We then got in the cage and snorkeled down and it was actually to my surprise pretty amazing! The water was super clear surprisingly almost like when your looking in the aquarium which is way different that I would have expected for the middle of the ocean;  and the sharks were pretty big, some 12 ft + and looked a little friendlier…kinda... Good news is we all survived even though my brother got pretty sea sick and almost had an opportunity to “feed the sharks”. In the afternoon we ate some of the most fabulous coconut shrimp at the shrimp truck things, which was surprising it was so good as the shrimp no didn’t come from the ocean, but from smelly little mud ponds. That night we went to the Polynesian cultural center and ate some awesome purple bread! and some some other fabulous food of course :), then watched the amazing show. So cool! It almost made me want to be a cool Polynesian dancer but I suppose for now I will just have to stick to my pathetic white Zumba dancing awesomeness.

Over all Hawaii was pretty cool, I think my favorite part was of course that nice time where I could relax on the beach and watch the waves…. or the little crabs sneaking out of their holes and run across the beach. If you know me well I’m sure you could imagine how much I appreciated that, ha. I was I could have gotten some pictures of them, but they were so dang fast, he he. In conclusion, all I can say is a little bit of paradise of 6 days is not to shabby and highly recommended :).

A Sweet Unexpected Reunion

The other day I was seeing some sweet 5 year old little twin girls and was talking to their mom when she randomly said, “I remember you”. At first I was confused but then just assumed she had recognized me from church or I reminded her of one of my relatives because that is usually what ends up happening. However, she then went on to say, “I remember when you were my girl’s nurse back when my they were born premature in the hospital. You were that nurse that helped us when one of our little girls had stopped breathing for a couple of seconds and that was one of the scariest times of our lives”. At that point my mind immediately stopped and after getting over the complete shock that someone had actually remembered from my nursing days, what to seemed to be at first an impossible memory flooded back in to my mind and I remembered those little girls. I remembered taking care of them on a number of occasions both in the NICU and peds unit when they were not even 4 lbs. I remembered being a new nurse spending 12 hrs monitoring their heart rate, trying to what seemed like an impossible task of getting them to eat an oz of formula, and one time spending whole the night adjusting their oxygen as their breathing was all over the place. I also remembered that night when one of the girls was feeding with her parents and she stopped breathing for a couple of seconds. Luckily after much stimulation she came back to normal but that scared her parents a lot and I had to pull my own emotions together and help them.

Now you may think that it was a cool experience that she remembered me  but I don’t think you can fully appreciate the significance of it unless you understand where I was in my life during that time. Reflecting back 5 years ago I remember it was during that time that life was not so easy for me. I was up to my neck in grad school, working nights, and even had night mares of babies turning blue and hearing lots and lots alarms. One night I was caring for some of the little ones and I remember being tired and frustrated because I wasn’t sure what life was going to bring me, I wasn’t sure I could handle the stress of doing this work for much longer, and for some crazy reason I couldn’t see how I was making any difference for these tiny babies that I knew would never remember me anyways.  It’s amazing how satan can influence you when you are at a weak moment in your life and how he makes you think and feel things you know aren’t true. But through it all I remember praying and feeling a great since of peace and I knew that for some reason that was where the lord wanted me to be and that everything would workout.  Now as I look back at that experience 5 years later I bet you can imagine the feelings I felt as I saw those little happy healthy, talkative little girls. It was such a miracle to see that these tiny helpless premature infants had grown and become beautiful little people with their own distinct personality, thoughts, and opinions. It helped me better understand god’s love and the potential he sees in us even as little infants. In addition, I never thought in a million years anyone would remember me as their nurse, but somehow amazingly she did. I know he could have put a number of different nurses in the position that night to help that family but I am grateful for some reason the lord chose me. It’s amazing how life seems to come back around at you like it does. Thinking back to that time in my life I would have never ever imagined I would have become basically their doctor, yet here I am. It was a sweet reunion and I thank god for that tender mercy he gave me and the lesson I learned that day in my office. It was once again a confirmation to me that god really is in control and knows best what we need to learn, where we need to be, and that sometimes we do make a difference. I am grateful I was able in a small way to instrument in his hands for that family.

Is it summer yet??

So today I woke up and turned on the news and the weather man said something about there being snow on the ground and I just about choked on my cereal. Isn’t it spring time and isn’t summer coming pretty much tomorrow? The problem is I feel like that has been my mentality for the past month and unfortunately time and time again I have been disappointed. To my defense we have had some wonderfully amazing days that would lead you to believing summer is coming; but unfortunately the Tri-cities loves to be tricky and the next day it will be either raining, randomly snowing apparently, or my favorite looking beautiful but with a crazy horrible 70 mph wind!

Luckily though life has gone on and I have been able to do some pretty fun things over the past couple of the weeks.At the beginning of the month some friends and I traveled up to Spokane to go snow shoeing. Thanks to some wonderful amigas I was able to borrow some amazingly warm snow clothing (because of course I have still been in AZ mode and have basically nothing) and it was awesome! I never realized how beautiful the Spokane Mountains could be and how easy snow shoeing is even though ½ the time I felt like I walked like a penguin. There is something cool and peaceful about being in the mountains in the middle of winter with not very many people around and being able to walk through the deep snow. I’d defiantly do it again someday, good times.

After that adventure later on in the month I went to my first Pi day party (on 3/14/12 of course) and it was pretty darn cool. We had tons of pie and one of my friends was even cool enough to make a pi pie, it was good times and good pie . That following weekend I also got to celebrate the anniversary of our “Crank it Slow” bike gang. This basically consists of a group of friends who get together and go for rides to different places such as by the river, down random trails through the city, and even  death rides out in Benton City! Anyway it’s a really fun group and this time we decided to take our ride on a path called the shelter belt by a high way which would usually be awesome. But unfortunately it was very windy that day and instead it ended up being a wind tunnel. This made things a little difficult going through it but boy was it an awesome ride going back! After that we had a fun bbq to celebrate complete with a green cake . Then that night a group of us hiked badger mountain which I have never done before or really heard about (one of those things that I think developed when I was away from the TCs apparently) and it was an awesome hike with a beautiful view. Someday I will probably do that again as well, but maybe in the day time and before the snakes come out…

                                    

Anyways so back to my previous statement I cannot wait until summer! I think living in Arizona has made me a little impatient but I guess it could be worse, I could be in Montana or the Yukon.

Reflections

Hello all my blogging friends! Yes I know it’s been rather long since I last was in the blogging business and I apologize if I broke some of your hearts because of that, but the good news is that I have decided to repent and recommit myself to writing again so I hope I can redeem myself. This time, however, I think along with my random adventures I want to add a little more personal touch to my posts so that way I can share and maybe in some way you can benefit from some of the things that I am learning as I go along on my “adventurous” life. As some of you know I have been getting old and this coming spring will be my 10 year class reunion, crazy hu? Recently I have been thinking a lot about what has happened over the past 10 years and man who would have thought I would have been able to experience so many things! And be living back in the Tricities, ha ha. Thinking back when I was young and getting ready to head off on my adventure to BYU I would have never thought I would be where I am today doing what I do. I mean lets be honest I came from a family where most all of my family got married super young and at 28 many (well how about 5 aunts) had like 4 kids, so I figured I would have been married and be a baby producer like the rest. Needless to say that did not happen (obviously) and instead I have had an rather different adventure of my own. Its crazy to think that in 10 years I have graduated from BYU, went on to get my masters at WSU, became a nurse practitioner (crazy), and lived in Provo and randomly Mesa, Arizona. I also have been able to travel to so many random cool countries including: India, Australia (twice), Indonesia, Singapore, Guatemala, Ecuador, and of course Mexico and Canada (if we are counting). In addition, I have had the amazing opportunity to meet so many amazingly wonderful people, finally learn the art of multiple choice, appreciate that amazing feeling when you know you don’t have to dedicate your entire life to homework or studying any more, experience the joys of working night shift, live military life, and see multiple times the harsh realities of 3rd world country living. I addition, and more importantly I have been able to have the amazing opportunity to serve and help heavenly fathers children in a vast variety of places and circumstances. From the wonderful islander children of Indonesia and the poor immigrant Mexican children in inner city Phoenix, to the kids who live in fancy homes and have everything they could possibly need and more. It really does make reflect as I see that same smile from every 4 month old baby about how they all start so much alike but just based on where they are born their lives will be so completely different. It helps me realize that God really does have a special place and circumstance for each of his children, and that gives me comfort especially when I see those little children who do not appear to be blessed with such “lucky” circumstances.

What a crazy/wonderful 10 years it has been and although it may have been a little different that the typical “Mormon girl” I truly believe we all have different missions in life and I am so grateful I have been blessed with this mission for this season of my life. I am also grateful for the person I have grown to become that 10 years ago I would have never dreamed of being. I mean I have even contemplated sky diving someday, who would have thought? Crazy! In all honestly though I feel like I can really only best describe the miracles that have happened through the words of Ammon in Alma 26:12 which reads:  “Yea I know that I am nothing, as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself but I will boast of my god, for in his strength I can do all things, yea behold many mighty miracle we have wrought in this land for which we will praise his name forever.” I know it is only with him and through him that I have been able to achieve and become who I have become. I am very humbled and grateful that he has given me the opportunity to do what I do and I know that it is only through him that I am able to do it. Granted just so you know it has not came without a price as I have defiantly had my share of trials along the way but I will say looking back that really all we have to do is trust our God and he will take care of us if desire to serve him. I look foreword to what the next 10 years have in store for me and what seasons that will bring. I’m sure it will be yet another adventure!