Learning From Each Other

Dr. Victoria McEvoy, a pediatrician from Cambridge, Massachusetts, is serving on her first volunteer mission with Project HOPE.

Working on the one-month long mission in Nicaragua and Panama did have its rough and tough moments. The weather was excruciatingly hot or soaking wet with rain. Time and resources did not permit everyone that needed care to receive it. Still, it was always a pleasure to watch Dr. McEvoy smile at a new patient and to see the joy on her face, along with the seriousness in her eyes when she was caring for each person.

A few patients really stand out in her mind. There was the 11-year-old boy with a hernia. “He had it all is life, ” Dr. McEvoy says. “We were able to get him on the ship to have it removed.”

She also treated a baby with pneumonia. “The mother brought he baby to the clinic and we were able to get the child admitted tot he local hospital,” she says. “If the mom had not brought the baby to the clinic, she probably would have not have sought out the help the baby really needed.”

Not only did Dr. McEvoy get to share her more than 30 years of pediatric experience with her patients, she also learned from them as well. “The thing that struck me is that the people we cared for have a lot of assets that we don’t have such as community, joy in simple things, and a hard working attitude,” She says. “It is amazing how much humans can endure, including the ones serving in this mission. They adapt to do whatever hand they have been given.”