Peace of Mind

by Christopher Percy Collier

When the parents couldn't be with their children receiving treatment at the Germán Urquidi Women and Children's Hospital in Bolivia, Dana Meyer '09 was there with a puzzle and a few crayons.

 

When Dana Meyer walked into work one day in the pediatric trauma ward of Bolivia’s Germán Urquidi Women and Children’s Hospital, she found a new patient: a 5-year-old girl, alone and crying. Between sobs, the little girl called out for her mother. But the child had been transported hundreds of miles across the country by ambulance– without her parents– to be treated for a broken arm. Meyer sat beside the little girl and colored with her. Minutes later, the child stopped crying. “She just needed to feel like a normal kid again,” says Meyer, a volunteer at the hospital. Two days later, the girl’s mother came to retrieve her, but other kids Meyer cared for in the trauma ward were not so lucky.

A 10-year-old patient named Juan Manuel, for instance, arrived in the hospital with a broken jaw that had become infected. The infection had spread to his esophagus and then to his voice box, which prevented him from speaking. “At one point, he couldn’t even walk,” says Meyer, who worked with him on coloring and other activities during the day. Manuel could neither read nor write. As a result, the two of them communicated through a crude form of sign language day after day. Ultimately, he regained his ability to walk, but he is unable to speak due to the severity of his infection. As for his parents, it remains unclear where they are–or whether they will ever return.

Nobody asked Meyer to hop a flight to Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, and volunteer her time helping kids with broken limbs, snake bites, incapacitating infections, and chemo-therapy treatments. But that’s precisely what this former student from Napoleon, Ohio has done four times: first, for half of her junior year at Denison; then again during three seperate visits after her graduation last May.

“The hospital was really understaffed,” she recalls, “which made it the kind of job where you could easily get burned out.” Meyer, however, didn’t get burned out. In fact, thanks to a $10,000 grant awarded by Davis Projects for Peace, not only did she return in the summer of 2009 to volunteer her time, but she decided the experience should also include educational outreach to increase awareness about public health. As a result, she established a series of educational workshops on pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, nutrition, and general wellness. Her program also involved bringing one of her Bolivian peers back home for an introduction to the U.S. healthcare system.