Mission to Cambodia
from Jordyn Westfall, Nursing student

Today we all separated into groups and were able to do a few different things. Some students went to the hospital for the day and were able to observe a mastectomy. Although it was a little warm in the operating room (they don’t keep the operating rooms at freezing temperatures like we do in the states) they really enjoyed being able to watch a surgery from beginning to end.

Another group of students went to continue work on the service project, which was replacing a family’s leaky roof with a new tin roof and support beams. They spent the day helping remove the old tin roofing from the home while getting to know the family and playing with children, teaching them tic tac toe.

The rest of us visited the Missionaries of Charity which was founded by Mother Teresa in 1950. The Missionaries of Charity is a center where nuns care for orphaned children with HIV, abandoned adults with mental disabilities and illnesses and provides hospice for women with AIDS. We spent time throughout the day playing with and feeding the children, helping  during lunch to feed those with disabilities, doing range of motion exercises with the hospice patients and walking with the patients in the courtyard. While we were doing this, two of our instructors did some teaching with the nuns. The nuns who care for these patients 24 hours a day obviously care greatly about the patients. However, none of them have any medical background and were eager to learn and ask questions. The center was a very quiet and peaceful place. We left there feeling that the nuns were giving these vulnerable adults and children the love and care that they deserve.

Dr. Taplin is good friends with the Chief Administrative Officer at the hospital, Keith, who is from the states. We were invited to his house for dinner, where went swimming in the pool and played the human knot before enjoying a very much needed dinner of pizza and brownies. The restaurants here are delicious and have some very authentic Cambodian dishes but a few of us probably won’t be eating rice for the next 6 months. Takeout pizza was just what the doctor ordered.