CHOOSING A MEDICAL CAREER

Today I went with the University of Wisconsin team for the second time to go work in the pop up clinic. This clinic was in a rural community outside where the health promoter system in San Lucas operates. Today I saw a family appointment with three patients, and the story of this family was really sad. The first patient we saw was a three year old boy named Antonio, and he presented with symptoms of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. While he was there his nose was constantly running and he vomited a lot. What’s even sadder is that the next patient was a malnourished 14 year old boy who was “the man of the house”. He made all the money for the family selling mangoes. His mom said that he wouldn’t eat to save money for the rest of the family and this was something I have never seen before. In the US, there are many programs that we could have referred this family too, to get support, but here we could only give him vitamins and basic meds and that’s it. This feeling of sadness slowly turned into inspiration because I realized that this is why I want to be a doctor and give the support to these people that need treatment. It gave me a whole new perspective on what medicine means and why I choose to pursue it.