A Doctor's Journey by Mary Lake Polan

Author:Mary Lake Polan [Polan, Mary Lake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: nonfiction, doctors without borders, social justice, Africa, women, women's issues, Eritrea, women helping women
ISBN: 9781940838854
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

RETURNING TO MASSAWA

In the spring of 2004, state radio broadcasts throughout the country called for all women with fistula to come to Massawa to be evaluated for surgery. The Ministry of Health hosted and housed the women and their families on the several acre grounds of the nearby Health Station. Entire families came with their children and their animals to live in tents and wait for us, weeks before we arrived. The Ministry fed nearly a hundred people as the women waited for surgery.

This was a very special trip. My daughter, Lindsay, now a Stanford college student, wanted to see the country I had worked in and talked so much about -- the country that had taken so much of my time for years. Perhaps because of her experience living in China at age five or her wish to become a doctor, she asked to come with us. She was willing to do any kind of work to be part of the team, so we invited her to be our scribe. I was so proud of her.

We drove into Massawa in the heat of the afternoon and went directly to the Health Station. I walked among the families with the other doctors. I watched the women wash out rags soaked with urine, hanging them up to dry in the sun. They smiled at us. The children ran about and laughed and chattered, and even the men – the fathers, brothers and husbands – nodded to us.

Lindsay, brown hair pulled back in a thick ponytail, sweating in a cotton T-shirt and khaki shorts, wandered around the compound, curious about everything.

The small exam room where we worked had only one foot-square window cut high into the bare white wall above the exam table. Even open, it provided no breeze or fresh air. Women came in, and with embarrassment, pulled up their skirts, removed their underclothes and sat on a cleaned but discolored rubber sheet. With their feet up in stirrups and knees tightly together, as if to hold back the wetness, they leaked urine on the rubber sheet. Lindsay had never seen a pelvic exam, much less one that showed torn flesh. At first, she kept her eyes strictly on the black notebook in front of her and her head averted to avoid the smells. She asked only the spelling of anatomic terms - posterior fornix, rectal mucosa, paresthesia - medical jargon she didn’t know. But after several hot, repetitive sessions, curiosity -- and perhaps boredom --got the upper hand and she began to look at and really see the women. She grasped their shame at the puddles they left on the exam table. She began to greet them at the door of the examining room and to help them get settled on the table, taking their underclothes and head scarves. These she carefully folded and placed on the table with her notebook. By the third day, she was asking the historical questions herself and recording them, leaving the doctors to examine the patients and describe the physical findings to her.

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