I initially meant to write this post after I finished work on Thursday, but I was in Vermont without internet access until today. When I left the hospital on Thursday, our group had just raised a total of $100,000 since they began keeping track of the funds. This momentous occasion will hopefully help us win a hospital-wide award for innovation of medical care at HUP. If we do win, I will get to come back and accept the award with the other volunteers and Trish. This would be extremely significant because it would make the work public, that we have been doing. Then all of the other divisions at the hospital could adopt our system and begin having volunteers raise money.
A Little Emergency Room Trip
My senior project is almost over. This is my fourth week working at HUP and I only wish that my project could continue for another couple weeks. A typical day at the hospital is quite different from my an average school day. At the hospital, I may have a rush of patients and paperwork and be extremely busy for hours or I may have only a few to see and get some free time to catch up on old applications. There are no scheduled classes at scheduled times. The patients are usually in the hospital for a few hours leaving me a large window to visit them. Lunch is another difference. At Westtown, everyday I have lunch from 1-1:45, while at HUP my lunch happens whenever I have a small chunk of free time. I like my life while working at a hospital, more than when I’m at school. It will be initially very difficult to readjust to life at Westtown.
This morning, I arrived at work a little before 8:00 and I went down to get a cup of coffee as I always do. When I came back upstairs, one of the patient coordinators, Carolyn, was in my office with a nurse practitioner and a doctor. Carolyn could not stop coughing and she was practically hyperventilating. After a few minutes of trying to stop her cough, we decided that I should take her to the ER so that she could use a nebulizer to stop her cough and diagnose her problem. One concerning element is that she has tested positive for Tuberculosis three times but does not have an active strand of the virus. She is not contagious and does not have any of the symptoms of the disease and most likely never will. Nevertheless, she was worried that this may have been the cause for her coughing. I was initially scared that I had contracted the serious disease from spending the morning with her but in the end, her chest x-ray showed no sign of TB, pneumonia or bronchitis. I was greatly relieved and later realized that if there was any risk that she had active tuberculosis she would have immediately been quarantined. But if the next time I get a TB test it comes out positive, I’ll know who to blame.
-Matt
p.s. this is my penultimate post. There will be one more this Thursday.
Home…
It has been 24 hours since we touched down in good old America. I think it is universal for our whole group that we want to go back RIGHT NOW.
I started missing it the second we got to the airport in Accra. It is so weird to be home with all of the internet access and the american food and the lack of children on the side of the road yelling “Obroni Obroni!”I miss the wonderful friends that I made during my time in Ghana and I know that mt life is changed. I will be the first to admit that I like my comfort items. I like my computer and I like my iPhone and I like my car, but being in Ghana made me realize that I don’t need those things. I have witnessed the lives of people who have nothing. I have seen teenagers that don’t have cell phones to be connected to. I have seen small children that are satisfied by the excitement of seeing a white person walking down the street.
When I was planning my Senior Project, Teacher Steve told me to pick a project that was going to change my life. I am so happy to report that I did. Heritage Academy is part of my life now. I know that I will not go one day for the rest of my life without thinking about the 2 and a half weeks that I spent there. Those kids, my students, they became my brothers and sisters. It might sound lame to say that thinking about those kids is bringing tears to my eyes, but it is true! I love them! I sound crazy, I know, and I’m rambling but I really can’t find the right words to express how much that school means to me now. I am planning on returning to Ghana for summer classes this July. My kids are praying for me to find enough money to make the trip again, and I will do anything to make sure that it happens. Oh! I also started the beginning phases of starting a club at Muhlenberg College next year. There has been a lot of interest so far and I am thrilled that people are interested.
Right now, I am sad that I am not in Ghana, but I’ll go back this summer, and I’ll see those amazing, wonderful, talented, brilliant, smart children again. I know I will.
Love,
Jordan
A Good Day
Today was a good day. It all started this morning on the train ride into Philadelphia. I realized that I had done the calculations incorrectly yesterday. I forgot that I did not work last Friday, so my hundredth hour was going to happen this morning. This reinvigorated me and gave me a mission to start the day off with. I was going to contact all of the organizations that I had applied to the previous week to find out if my patients had been approved for their grants. Unfortunately, most of the places that I called were not open at 8 am so my calls went straight to voicemail. Then Trish arrived and told me to contact the Hope Lodge, a facility that houses patients that to come to the hospital regularly and live far away. I was able to help extend a patient’s stay for 51 days. The approximate cost to stay at the lodge is $190 per night. But the patients don’t have to pay, so we saved her $9,690 in total. Within minutes after I found this out, Trish told me that another patient that I spoke to yesterday would be approved for his respite vacation. This is a $5,000, week-long, all-expense paid DisneyWorld vacation for him and his family. His two children have never gone on a real vacation before and this will be there chance. Our hope is that this will give his children a happy memory of their father before he passes away. I am extremely excited to tell them this news on Friday, when the decision becomes official. This raised my grand total to $22,000 in 100 hours, which is twice my initial goal for the entire project. My next goal is to earn an additional $10,000 during my last week. This is very likely to happen because my other patients will most likely receive the two $5,000 respite vacations and the two $6,700 chemotherapy co-pay assistance grants that I have applied for.
This afternoon while I was looking at the list of patients that were in the clinic, I noticed a familiar name. I had gotten this elderly patient free Philadelphia Phillies tickets this past summer. I was thrilled to know that he was still alive as most of the patients that I saw during the summer had passed away. When I went to his room, he and his wife immediately recognized me and thanked me for the baseball tickets. They told me that he had received proton therapy and was now completely cancer-free. It is amazing to know that the new advancements of medicine are actually elongating patient’s lives and helping to eradicate cancer. This visit only made my day better, it was the icing on the cake. After work, I decided to treat myself to some well deserved ice cream. Today was not a good day; today was a great day.
-Matt
A Rough Landing
There was a big thud of the airplane’s wheels meeting Cincinnati’s runway. With that thud I awoke to my new reality. I had already said goodbye to my fellow travelers in the Philadelphia airport and I was alone. What am I supposed to say now? When people ask me how was my trip, they just want a soundbite. Unfortunate for them my trip dosn’t come in a soundbite, and unfortunate for me I wouldn’t even know where to begin in a conversation. So here I am, my new challenge in America is to figure out how to stay in touch with the information I discovered and what to make of it.
I apologize that this blog entry has been jumpy, but with the initial emotions of being back jumpy is what you’re going to get.
Re-entering America was the real culture shock I got out of the trip. Walking down the long terminal I passed faces who for the first time in two weeks, weren’t a statement on American politics or the conflict, and they didn’t see me as someone who was making a statement either. But the minute I open my mouth to say where I was coming from– it happens.
I spent the last week in Rammallah falling into a deep love with Palestine. The culture, the people, the colors, and even the roaring blur of Arabic harmonies that woke me up routinely at 4 in the morning and repeated throughout the day. Basically the only thing I did not enjoy during my stay was the cold rain that seemed to pour from the minute we arrived until the minute we left.
I have never felt more connected with any culture then the culture I found around every corner in Rammallah. I was at a friend’s house Saturday night and they put on Arabic music and started to do traditional Arab dancing– debkah. It was incredible. It was culture. On the drive home, my friend told me that there is never a moment when he doesn’t feel Palestinian. Going through a check point or even just down the street to the super market, he is surrounded by people who are struggling with the oppression that he is struggling with. We drove down the empty street and looked over the hill to a settlement. “So when you’re older, you want to live in Palestine?” I asked. He turned the corner and the settlement disappeared. “Absolutely. I’m going to do whatever I can to free my country.” I’ve never felt that way about my country. Despite their hardships, I am jealous of the kids at Rammallah Friends School. They have culture and they have pride and connection with the place they live in. After learning about America’s involvement in the conflict and even prior to this trip, I don’t think I would say the same.
So already I have felt emotion and struggle with Palestine that I haven’t even felt for my own country, and I refuse to let that die. Looking back to the first blog entry I wrote, I asked if Palestinians could ignore the conflict. Unfortunately, the conflict isn’t just present in their lives it is banging on the doors of their houses, it is uprooting their olive trees, it is locking them in to a place where they can feel nothing but hate from the power that is oppressing them. When I went to an Israeli’s house for dinner before my flight, they said that Israel isn’t even focussed on Palestine right now; it is concerned with Iran. That brought tears to my eyes.
Sitting in a classroom for my final months of senior year is not going to be ideal after the trip I’ve had. I feel like sitting down in the White House and having a conversation with Barack Obama instead. Someone needs to explain to me the benefits our country has in financially supporting a military occupation that is far from just.
Westtown describes Senior Projects as a “transformative experience” and I sort of smirk at that. Transformative to me describes a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, and with the two weeks I’ve had I feel like I’ve witnessed a mountain growing from just one stone. I look forward to the day when I can return to Israel and Palestine. I dream of a day without Israeli occupation there. I see peace as a goal not as something unreachable. This was truly an incredible experience and it will never be over for me. Right now I have hope pumping through my veins and I’m trying to figure out how to put it in use.
Peace,
Meg
PS- students interested in having this experience as your senior project? DO IT. And ask me any questions about it too.
Understand
It’s hard to describe the incredible lack of desire I had to blog over the past few days. While I can’t seem to pinpoint it, when we began staying with our Ramallah friends’ host families I had been utterly dreading opening that computer and baring my soul through many clicks on a keyboard. What I can say, however, is that this second part of the trip, once we were stationed in Ramallah, was vastly different than the first half. Before I was traveling and struggling to understand and then I was simply there. Rather than reflecting out the window of our tour bus I was being drenched in experiences as I trudged through the city’s streets in the pouring rain. As hard as I try I will never truly understand politics. What I do understand is humanity. One of the first things my host sister, Dina, said to me was in response to my desire to pick a side. “You don’t have to pick a side,” she said “You just have to understand”. No lecture, tour guide, or discussion has helped me better understand than getting to know Dina. Paired up randomly it turned out to be one of those wonderful situations where the more time we spent together the more we realized we had in common. She is so much more than a poor Palestinian suffering under an occupation. She is the rebel daughter, the ex-girlfriend, and the best friend. As a teenage girl she deals with the very same issues I do and on top of that she fights for her freedom.
Friday night we sit on the couch in the sitting area outside our bedrooms and laugh as she goes through pictures on Facebook and describes her friends. She tells me stores about each one, drawing connections to former couples and cringing at those girls she knows hate her simply because she doesn’t match her nail polish to her outfit and she flirts with all the wrong boys. She asks me if I’ve heard of the rapper Lowkey and when I haven’t she immediately pulls up Youtube and finds his video “Terrorist”. Standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people, his rap implores and forces anyone listening to examine who is truly doing the terrorism. His angry words seem to fill my soul before coming back out of my body in the form of goosebumps. Sitting next to Dina who I’ve become close enough to hug and giggle with as girls so often do, I cannot say I understand the conflict but I know I understand human connection. As we move on to another video by Lowkey called Obamanation I am reminded of my role in all this. Obamanation begins with the statement “This is not an attack on the American people. This is an attack on the system in which they live.” While Obama preached change as thick as the billionaires wallets that fund our nations political campaigns, he wouldn’t dare touch Israel. Our foreign policy is what ensure the continuation of both the conflict and the occupation. I cannot say whether it is one state solution or two. I cannot say where the right to return must be recognized in theory or in practice. I can say that violence will increase and lives will be lost as apartheid is renewed in full if something doesn’t change halfway across the world in Washington D.C. Another piece of graffiti written on the wall that simply said “Made in the U.S.A.” is another image forever engrained in my mind and I understand my responsibility.
Ethics, a threshold, and some high praise
I would like to start out by apologizing for not publishing any posts for the last few days. I have been both very busy and very tired. Yesterday, I spoke with a patient that I had never met before on the phone. I was trying to get his personal information so that I could apply to a few foundations on his behalf. Last October, he was having terrible stomach pain so he came to Penn to figure out what was wrong. The doctor ran some tests and discovered that he had a stage IV cancer diagnosis. The cancer had metastasized to both his liver and his lungs, meaning almost certain death within a year. What troubled this patient the most was the way that he found out that he had cancer. Apparently, the surgeon was extremely blunt when he told the patient, which depressed the him greatly. I was quite saddened by this news. I want to be a surgeon later in my life and I hope that I will be able to use this experience to become a better physician. I will ensure that my time working with desperate patients will stick with me and help shape me into a more well-rounded doctor, who can deliver painful news in the best possible manner. In the end, this patient told me that the surgeon gave him little hope that he would live. He said that every night he goes to bed wondering if he’ll wake up and as a result has begun praying more often. When I called to help him financially, he broke down crying and told me that he thought that I was a sign from God and that I was acting as his messenger on Earth. My offering of help gave him faith that there are people looking out for him, and additional hope that he may be able to overcome the odds and beat his cancer. I was caught off guard and left speechless. All that I could muster out was a thank you. I was unaware of how large the impact my project is having. This patient and other appreciative patients give me the strength to continue trying my hardest and to carry on despite my lack of energy.
Today, I had a discussion about medical ethics with my coworkers. It started when I learned that many doctors have to treat patients even though they may have a rational objection. Trish told me a story of a lung cancer patient that had long hair that began to fall off as he underwent chemotherapy. Once he lost his hair , his doctors, all of whom were Jewish, realized that he had a swastika tattooed on the back of his neck. Nevertheless they gave him the level of care that they gave all of their other patients. I hope that I never encounter a moral dilemma where I have to make a choice like this. As I am not sure if I will have the maturity to make all of the right decisions.
I ate lunch today in CHOP (Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania) and saw how cheerful and bright everything was. This made me wish that I worked in the adjacent hospital, until Robert, another volunteer, pointed out a sad fact. Where we work, patients are fairly regularly sent to hospice care or simple pass away. This is saddening but often accepted because of their old ages. In CHOP, when a patient dies, this is devastating for both the patient’s family and the medical staff. I do not think that I would be able to handle a month of working in pediatric oncology. This I reaffirmed my belief that I do not want to specialize in pediatric surgery. That field of medicine calls for a stronger willed person than me.
On top of all of that, I passed one milestone and came incredibly close to reaching a second one. Today, I worked my one-hundredth hour and earned $9,500 during that time. To put this in perspective, for every hour that I work, I am essentially raising $95 for patients. That makes this an extremely high paying job, more than 13 times the minimum wage. Hopefully, tomorrow I will pass my goal of raising $10,000 for my patients. My next goal will be to raise $15,000 by March 15th, my last day of work.
-Matt
Let Not..
…a poem i scribbled during a discussion on Friday, March 2nd
let not war breed hate.
let not ignorance breed injustice.
peace is not just an agreement, it is human connection.
for without empathy we are simply slaves to suffering.
this conflict is a trial is desensitization,
in apathy.
violence is not a social custom, it is a product of
opression.
let us open the gate of understanding and tear down the wall of terror.
Did I Just Learn the Cure for Cancer?
Today was a rather uneventful day. I did contact a number of my patients and found out that most of them had been approved for the grants that I applied for last week. I have helped to raise almost $6,000, bringing me more than half way to my goal of $10,000. The most significant event of the day was a lecture that I attended. The subject of the speech was nutritional intervention therapy. I hoped that by attending, I could learn some alternative tactics for helping patients battle cancer.
I immediately knew that it would be an interesting meeting because the speaker spent the first fifteen minutes prefacing the lecture by saying that his research is quite controversial. His research supposedly proved that all animal-based products were a major factor in the development and progression of cancer. In one of his tests, he exposed two groups of rats to large amount of a known cancer-causing carcinogen. He then fed one group a 5% protein diet and the other group a 20% protein diet for 100 weeks or about two years. The results are extremely conclusive; all of the rats in the 20% protein group died and none of the rats in the 5% protein group died. When examining the rats’ on a molecular level, substantial evidence was shown within the first few days. While cancer cells were quickly developing in the doomed group, the other rats were becoming healthier and staying cancer-free. Years later, he tested humans that had different stages of a variety of cancers. His results were almost identical, the less animal-based proteins that were consumed, the better the patient’s outcome was.
This caused him to develop his idea for an unprocessed, whole-food, plant-based diet. To quote the speaker, “casein is the most significant carcinogen that we consume.” Casein makes up 80% of the protein in cow’s milk. This diet is supposed to prevent and/or cure not only cancer but a variety of diseases including both types of diabetes, and heart problems. Now with that being said, I believe that this is completely absurd. The results of his studies were too perfect to be true. Researchers seldom get that conclusive evidence for their thesis. I am not the only person who believes this either. Once I told Trish, she emailed the Penn oncology nutrition specialists and told them about this man’s research. She agreed that the results were most likely not true.
Despite what I and some of the other doctors believe, this raises a few very important questions. What if? What if he is right about everything that he researched? What if I just learned the remedy for some of the worst diseases afflicting humans today? This is obviously worth pondering. The benefits clearly outweigh the almost non-existent risks. In the future, I would like to try to only eating a whole-food, plant-based, not processed diet for a period of time. Who knows what benefits it could have for me and the worst thing that could possibly happen would be that I don’t like the diet and I switch back. That doesn’t seem too bad.
-Matt
There Are People Here
Since I’ve written, my days have been packed tightly with religious sites, museums, debkah dancers, falafel, shwarma, lectures, refugee camps and that just skims the surface. Most all of these places and moments were moving, including and especially my first drink of Arab tea. All of these incredible experiences, however, did not give me the same connection with the conflict or the land as the people here who I ate olives with– not heard lectures from or toured with, but the people who leaned in to kiss me on both cheeks and sat down with me and told me about their lives.
Abi means father in Arabic. This is what I called my host-dad from Beit Sahour. After our dinner together in a fancy restaurant, Abi strutted right in, draped in old flannel pajamas and cozy slippers. In the house, he insisted we saw it as our own; he force fed us meals, called us his children, taught us silly games, and most importantly introduced us to WWE. He watched it every night for hours, our whole family did. He’d shout at the screen endearingly, “Habibi! Habibi!” or “My love! My love!” whenever a wrestler did something extraordinary. Abi’s quirky but entirely hospitable personality made him all the more adorable, when he sat legs crossed in the corner of the couch cheering at the screen. Every so often Abi would take out rolling papers and fancy tobacco and roll his own cigarettes, then go out to smoke one. In the middle of this action, he asked us to join him on his back porch; he needed to show us something. The four Westtown students and his children followed him out back, where he pointed to Jerusalem. “We have a lovely view of Jerusalem.” He said with a heavy accent. “We used to I mean, before the settlement.” He then directed our attention to the hills in between his home and the home of Jerusalemites. The hills were covered in a major settlement, one that did not keep good relations with the neighboring villages. He stuck his chest out in effort to adjust his pride. “How am I supposed to see this as my land when Israeli’s are growing increasingly near? This is an illegal settlement. You see that wall?” He took in a loaded deep breath. “That wall marks where our land starts. And they don’t even care.” He brought us back inside because of the cold night’s air. “I love the Jews. Jesus teaches us to love all people. And the Israeli’s are people who I love, when I work out there, I spend the night in my Jewish friend’s house. No problem. The problem is in the politics.” He went on to speak more about this, the politics of the situation. Just as I began to think I was figuring this whole thing out… I hade hope, but seeing Abi swell with sorrow made me lose it a little. His whole self got bigger with sadness and deflated with hopelessness. He was the first person who really touched me.
The second person that really touched me was a liberal hands-in-their-pockets type-of-guy named Joe. Joe is twenty-one years old, and a German/Swiss man who comes to Palestine frequently because he feels a connection with the people. Joe is crazy. He was the first person we have really gotten to hang out with. Truth be told, this gave him an advantage in becoming our friend. He had a great sense of humor and had all the girls laughing. But he also told us the truth about the little things we couldn’t get in lectures: what exactly we dipped our pita in, what the colors stand for in the flag and he told us his own stories about the brothers he has gained here. Whenever he spoke, every girl at the table leaned in with complete interest in catching every word. Our Westtown boys thought we were smitten with him, when truthfully we just felt more real and connected to his perspectives then to the usual lectures (which, don’t get me wrong, are completely fascinating.) What Joe told us didn’t shock us like a tidal wave, it slowly lured us in to this way of life and he gave us time to process it. Being able to relate to a “local” woke us up from the rhythm we had become used to.
Now, I’m in bustling Ramallah with my habibti, Dalia. I’ve met people my age and had really genuine conversations about their place in the conflict and my place too. It feels powerful to not know everyone’s names but know their stories from the second Intifada. The fact that we are all so willing to jump right into that conversation makes me feel the strength behind the hope. There is a purpose to why we are becoming friends. I have come to realize now more than ever, how I will not be able to un-live these experiences. They have begun to affect how I view my future, the media, my place in the conflict, my government’s responsibility in the conflict…. It’s heavy stuff. But what I’m getting at is that I’m carrying these two weeks and these people with me forever.
Peace,
Meg
PS
It is so incredibly disturbing to me that this kind of oppression is present in the world and is dictating so much of US Foreign Policy—why is the U.S. letting this happen? Check out the BDS movement and consider participating. Also, watch Occupation 101. So much more to say, so little words to say it in, so many languages to translate this message to…
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