Why

My friend, Claire, asked me tonight what made me so very passionate about being in medicine.

The answer used to be that God told me to. I was prophesied over, and it was confirmed. God telling me to wasn't a wrong answer, nor was it an insufficient one while it was the only one I had. However, when you are writing personal statements for schools and telling people exactly why you are working so hard and attempting to get into such a challenging career, you need to know the answer thoroughly for yourself. You cannot, with great success, do what I did in writing about personality and your unique past and activities and things, not without a real reason. That, of course, is the reason why, in preparing to go into a professional workplace, you are required to do an internship, to shadow someone in your chosen field.

So when I went to Uganda to obtain my field experience, I went there for the purpose of learning why I want to be a doctor (beyond the fact that God told me to be one). And there I obtained the memories that I hope to hold onto forever. Honestly, I feel like I hardly accomplished much more from that month-long trip beyond finding out why I want to be a doctor. We were untrained, the leadership was inconsistent, and I felt utterly and completely useless.

I remember going into a separate room in the lab at the hospital in Kamuli, Uganda, where they kept a lot of technical equipment. One machine they had could calculate the CD4 cell count (immune-response stuff in cells that decrease in the presence of AIDS). If I remember correctly, a count at 150 or below meant that the patient would receive treatment, 'cause their case was bad enough to receive medical attention with the limited resources the hospital had. So if a patient's blood was bad enough to show up at 157, they would not receive treatment. Life hangs in the balance by a few numbers read on a machine. And medicine has advanced enough that receiving treatment could have drastic effects on the life expectancy of the individual. (More info on that at http://www.aidsmap.com/UK-Life-expectancy-on-HIV-treatment-improving-shows-importance-of-prompt-diagnosis-and-treatment/page/2101259/)

I have an opportunity to go to Kenya this July. It will be with a team with consistent leadership, that trains well, and that keeps you working hard throughout the trip so you never feel useless. Yet I do not want to go. I have so many memories in my mind of people in pain, of empathizing without having a hope of making a difference, that the thought of going to Africa again, even though I won't be working in hospitals, seems unbearable. I need to be able to do more. They will have children there that they treat for AIDS, at clinics set up at orphanages we visit.

I mean, what is it worth if I can preach or be an example or show that I care if I can't even really help??? I don't think I could bear spending $3,000 (or asking others to) just for the sake of letting my personality and the love of God radiate from me. I could be learning to do something tangible for them. If God tells me to go, of course I'll go, but without Him leading me directly to it, I don't think I could allow my feelings of being inadequate and useless to travel there with me, to be a hindrance and an obstacle for the team.