Medical Blog

I have a dream.  My dream is to make a positive difference in someone’s life and that the act will be remembered.

That’s hard to do when you are a person who is perfectly happy to be in the background.  I won’t be front and center.  I’m not an adrenaline junky.  If life was a movie set, I would be the lighting person.  Equally important role, but who sticks around reading the credits for the lighting persons name?  If you see me, I will be in the back, quietly helping and working.  I will work even harder to stay out of the spotlight.

So, how will I make a positive difference to one person in the background?

I am in Malawi, when another support member of the group is questioning her role.  Why am I here?  What am I doing to make a difference?  She looks around and looks at the medical staff like they are more valued.  This hits me hard as I often feel the same way and I am medical.  I want to offer words of comfort, but I know those words will not help.  It is the same words spoken to me and I still have those insecurities and self doubt.  As the days pass this is still weighing on me.  She has value, every step of this is dependent on her role.  She plans and organizes.  Without that we wouldn’t be here to do the part we do.  I also know those words won’t help as I have heard them and I know it to be true but the self doubt remains.  

I am in Kalupe, working the pharmacy.  It is the end of the last day of clinic.  It is busy and I am only vaguely aware of my surrounding.  I glance up and a Malawian women is eyeing me, she strides with purpose and her eyes never drop from my glance.  She approached with haste and begins speaking her native Chichewa.  She speaks fast and with passion.  I cannot understand.  I immediately think, I forgot to give her something, she feels she was not treated appropriately, what did I miss?  I call for my Malawian interpreter Lucy.

“Lucy! I need you to tell me what she is saying.”

Conversation begins in Chichewa and once again I am lost from the conversation.

Lucy turns to me and says…

“She wants you to know that she remembers you from last year.  She came in with severe malaria.  Because of you and the other American’s she received medications.  She says thank you.  She says you saved her life and wants you to know she is fine.”

Tears form quickly and we embrace each other.

It takes a village to care for a village.  It takes people with different talents and passions, who can work together to achieve a common goal.

In the background, I was remembered.  Life goal achieved thanks to God, this team, and VIP.

Thank you to everyone on this team for your talent, support, and friendship.  We are now family.

“Alone we can do so little; Together we can do so much”  –  Helen Keller

Last month our medical team treated a young boy with bulging, watery eyes. He was diagnosed with glaucoma, a build-up of fluid and pressure inside his eyes. If left untreated, the pressure would end up damaging his optic nerve, rendering him permanently blind. He was already experiencing deteriorating vision when our team examined him, and they knew that they would have to act quickly if they were going to save his eyesight. Unfortunately, with the thousands of patients that came to our clinics every day, our team was not able to find the right medicine for the boy while on the ground in Malawi. But Lucy Goeke, a VIP Board Member and the head of our medical team, kept thinking about the boy on her flight home and was determined to save his vision.

Lucy visited several Ophthalmologists when she returned to the United States, describing to them the boy’s condition and asking what could be done to help him. On the day that VIP Executive Director Liz Heinzel-Nelson was scheduled to return to the U.S. Lucy was told what medicine to get to treat the boy’s glaucoma and she emailed Liz the information. Liz received the email on her way to the airport to catch her flight home and immediately made a detour, stopping at several pharmacies until she found one with the right medicine. Thanks to Lucy’s persistence, Liz’s determination and the help of the VIP staff in delivering the medicine to his mother, the young boy received three months’ supply of the medicine to treat his glaucoma.

Unfortunately, while glaucoma is a very treatable disease, it requires a lifetime of care to keep it under control. In order to save his eyesight the boy would need to continue to take the medicine for the rest of his life. But of course the lifetime cost of the medicine would be far more than his family could ever hope to pay. And sadly this happens all too often to people living in extreme poverty. The medicine and procedures exist to help them, but they don’t have the money to pay for them. So instead of having their diseases treated, they go blind, lose their teeth, or a limb, and sometimes even their lives. In fact, Dr. Geoff Tabin, Co-Founder of the Himalayan Cataract Project, highlighted the tragic relationship between blindness and death in the developing world: “You know, once someone goes blind in a developing world, their life expectancy is about one-third that of age and health matched peers. And for a blind child, the life expectancy is five years. And also in the developing world, it takes, often, a person out of the work force, or a child out of school, to care for the blind person. So when we restore sight to a blind person, we’re freeing up their family and restoring their life.”

Fortunately, this story, and many others that VIP is involved in, ends differently than many others in the developing world. Bryan and Jeff Clippinger, the sons of Registered Nurse, Jackie Clippinger, formed a wonderful bond with this young boy while they were in Malawi on the medical trip, and their family has agreed to pay for his glaucoma medication for the rest of his life! Thanks to the actions of our Medical team and the incredible generosity of the Clippinger family, this young boy will have his eyesight, and perhaps his life, saved!

Greetings from the beautiful country of Malawi!
Our first full day was filled with organization, team collaboration, prayers, and meeting new people. We began our day, at least I did, to the rooster calling bright and early. The first half of our day we unpacked all of our generous donations and organized them. Then the wonderful Malawian medics arrived where we all met, got to know each other, talked about the clinics we will be at, and became friends with one another. The people of Malawi are such warm spirited people who make you feel incredibly welcomed. I have shaken more hands in one day than I have in a year. The friendship and relationships here are beautiful and easy to create with the joyous people. The second half of our day we were humbled with the opportunity to visit the government hospital in Zomba. It is difficult for me to describe what I saw because it is an experience you have to see with your own eyes to understand. The hospital experience was eye opening and humbling to be apart of. It was amazing to see how universal medicine is. For example, a lot of the equipment was the same such as yellow disposable stethoscopes, IV tubing, and saline bags. It was truly an unforgettable experience that I am grateful to have had the opportunity.
I also had the joy of meeting a large group of children who were walking home from school. They absolutely LOVED getting their picture taken and then seeing the picture. The smiles of the Malawian children and Malawians in general is contagious.
There is a positive atmosphere here filled with love, laughter, and joy. I am looking forward to our first day of clinic tomorrow and the rest of the trip!
Thank you all for the prayers, support, and donations!
Maria Hill
BSN Nursing Student from Xavier University

Katie Hulit was one of 26 participants on the 2017 VIP Medical Trip to Malawi. Our team made up of Doctors, Nurses, Nursing students and other medical professionals, along with support staff, treated nearly 6,000 patients in 4 rural clinics last month. Katie, a Registered Nurse, treated hundreds of patients suffering from malaria, respiratory infections, burns and dozens of other ailments, who would not have been able to receive medical care otherwise. While practicing medicine in Malawi was disorienting and at times distressing for some of the first time participants, for Katie it reminded her of a similar trip she took to Guatemala years ago where she had decided to become a nurse in the first place.
But although the lack of documentation and electronic records, and the mud walls and dirt floors were all familiar to Katie, Malawi also stands out as incredibly unique. A few people and stories stood out to Katie as she reflected on her trip. One special patient was Jackie, who Katie met when the team made home visits to especially vulnerable families. Jackie is an 18 year old boy with an ever present smile on his face. When Jackie was a baby he had hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid around his brain. In the U.S. he would have immediately gotten a shunt to drain the fluid and relieve the pressure, but growing up in Malawi he didn’t have the fluid drained until he was 5 years old. As a result he received extensive brain damage and is non-verbal and doesn’t have the full use of his legs. Three years ago the Medical team visited Jackie and fixed his wheelchair, this year our medical team brought him a brand new wheelchair to replace the old one. He beamed with happiness as he showed off his new wheelchair and the new clothes that Katie and the rest of the team had brought him.
There is no doubt that every year our medical team and people like Katie save and improve lives through our clinics and home visits. But Katie knows that the medical team only goes to Malawi once a year, and though VIP is opening a new weekly medical clinic to complement our existing medical clinics, the situation is more difficult when the VIP team is not on the ground. While the medical team was there the Zomba Central Hospital, located in the nearest large city, was sending patients from the hospital to our rural clinics because the hospital had run out of medication. Katie also worries about follow up on infections and a general lack of medical knowledge. One boy had cut his foot open on a large piece of glass and was given antibiotics at the local hospital. Not familiar with western medication, the boy put the pills into the wound rather than swallowing them. The wound quickly became infected and though he had the wound treated by our medical team and was taught how to take antibiotics, there is a real chance he could lose his leg, or worse. Sometimes even a simple cut in Malawi can be a death sentence. 
Katie plans to return to Malawi next year with the medical team to save more lives. We at VIP are incredibly grateful and humbled that we are able to partner with such talented and compassionate people who are working towards the day when people in Malawi and the United States can expect the same degree of medical care. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do for the people of Malawi Katie!