By
Lloyd Williams, MD/PhD '08
Today, a little girl in Africa is looking out the door of her one room hut at the sunshine and the other children playing. She is sitting where she has sat many days watching the other 9 year-old girls braiding each other's hair, but she can't join because of severe burns she received last year. But this day is different, because today, for the first time in more than a year, she has hope that she may be able to join them soon. You see, Mercy was aptly named because she is depending on the mercy of people, many she has never seen, to provide the money and equipment for her to regain the use of her hands. Those who haven't met her have made $7,000 in cash donations, $1,000 in equipment and $17,000 in discounts on products for her care and the hospital at which she is staying.
Those of us who have met her can't forget the cries of pain that used to echo through the hospital where three doctors and 30 nurses try valiantly to care for as many as 220 patients. Where pain medications that might have brought her relief have had to be put on hold so that the hospital can buy malaria and tuberculosis medications to save lives every day. Where her surgery had to be postponed twice because of lack of anesthesia and bandages. I can still vividly remember standing outside her room preparing to change her dressings without anesthesia, because it wasn't available that day. I kept shouting at myself in my mind, "You have to do this. It will hurt, but you have to do this, if you don't, she'll get an infection and die." I can't forget her shy smile and her deep pleading eyes that seemed to say, "please be gentle." I remember how she would say to me, "just do the left arm today, not the right arm, okay." I remember how she made us laugh with her dislike of eating vegetables that we learned one day we changed her dressings. She was crying and I thought I was hurting her but then the nurse translated what she was saying, "I want chicken today, not cabbage."
As
clearly as I remember her, I don't even know if she would recognize me
today, but Nelson Henderson once said, "The true meaning of life
is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit." I
haven't had as much time as I would like to think about the meaning of
life due to second year, the USMLE boards and getting married since my
return from Africa last summer. I still am asking why children like her
have to suffer so much when the shade seems so prevalent here in America.
In my time at Tufts (I'm an MD/Ph.D. student beginning the first year
of graduate school) I have met a lot of people here who have similar questions
mixed with a great love for people and a strong desire to improve their
lives. Hey, if we were in medical school for the money, there are faster
ways of making money that require fewer sleepless nights - right? But
on one of those sleepless nights in your first two years, or when someone
is yelling at you on the wards, you may find yourself wondering, "I
came to medical school to help people, am I really helping anyone right
now?" When you are teaching students and see Jack Tsai's parody of
Jay Leno on the street showing student after student mis-identifying the
humerus, you may wonder am I getting through to these students?
Here is a concrete opportunity to make a difference in one person's life.
It will only take a few minutes. This May as part of the MERCY RIDE, about
$25,000 in donations, equipment, and discounts was raised for her reconstructive
surgery and for the hospital where she is being treated. Using this money,
some of the basic needs at the hospital have been met and Mercy was able
to finally have the first of her surgeries. At this time, one of her hands
is healing, but the other still needs reconstruction. In order to make
sure her second surgery goes as planned, it is even more essential the
money to be available for to pay for her surgery and for the hospital
to have basic supplies. Already prior to having her successful surgery
in late July, her surgery had been cancelled once due to not having any
anesthetics in the hospital. Most of us can't even imagine what it is
like to have to receive medical care without adequate anesthesia or to
have procedures cancelled because the hospital has run out of gauze bandages.
Some people don't have to imagine because it is all too real for them.
The doctors and nurses who care for her at Macha Hospital are wonderful
people and very skilled, but without equipment and medications, they can
only do so much.
You can help! Here are some ways.
1) Make a donation to the Mercy Ride II - which began September 28, 2002.
2) If you are a poor student, talk to someone who isn't about this project.
3) Make donations of drugs or equipment to the hospital she is at. (Please contact me first).
4) Come to the Mercy Benefit Concert, TBA for early October in Davis Square.
5) If you have any questions please contact me at lloyd.williams@tufts.edu
For more information please see the website www.orangefilter.com/index1.html
and click on the Mercy Ride icon. The site includes pictures, complete
descriptions of the hospital in Zambia and will contain updates about
events and the use of contributions.
(While you are at orangefilter, please check out the amazing photography of Nitun Verma - 3rd year Tufts medical student and member of the Royal Photographic Society)
Even if you can't help with this project, please - "do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
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