Last week we took a 13 hour course on health and wellness; aka icky pictures of diseases and a lot of talking about worms! Well, I do not do so well with health classes. In 5th grade I had to go to the sick room because I almost passed out just talking about needles and blood. (This is one reason I had my baby at home.) I don’t do hospitals, needles, even the doctor is pushing it for me. Anyway, God gave the strength I needed to complete the course!
The first day after class we had an optional injection, blood pressure and otoscope(checking out the ears) course. I was so excited to hear that it was OPTIONAL, but I was challenged to go anyway and I’m glad I did. Poor Brion, I stabbed him pretty hard because I was so nervous, but he didn’t let on that it hurt at all. (He told me later when we got home. What a good man!) And I am pretty sure that he is a professional already because I didn’t even feel the injection he gave me. We just used a bit of saline solution for the injection so they were not real immunizations, but still gave us some practice. I think I could do it again, and maybe a bit more gracefully, if I needed to in the future.
During the actual class time, we talked about many of the possible ailments that come from working in tropical locations, how we can educate people on: clean drinking water, good hygiene, proper nutrition and the possibility of setting up a small medical clinic in their tribe/area. We covered so many different topics in those 13 hours that I can’t even touch on them all without taking up ten pages!
What this made me realize is how many people die everyday from lack of knowledge on good nutrition and basic care of their bodies. It broke my heart to hear about malnutrition and kids dying when the solution is so simple. Sometimes just changing the water they drink or knowing how to feed a baby after you stop breastfeeding. It made me so thankful for all those people who dedicate their lives to helping others in the area of medical attention and education.
I could go on forever about what we learned and how important this class really was to us, but I won’t. We learned so much and I only got light-headed a few times :). All-in-all, this was a great experience for us. As hard as it was to hear some of these things and look deeper into these topics, it is so good to have our eyes opened up to the realities of life all around the world and specifically in third-world countries.