...a Case FOR SURGERY

It is nice to know that God continues to give his people strenght, the will, courage and capability to help others. Each and everyone of us has a passion. In that passion, lies your purpose in life. Yes, it is also my believe that each and everyone of us has a purpose in life which we execute in various ways and forms. For some, their purpose in life will be executed within a matter of seconds, sometimes unbenknownst to them. Some people dig deeper, seek more and expand their purpose in life, however still within thesame context for which they were meant for.

This brings me to this article (please copy and pase in your browser and read).
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/toughcalling.html

It is role models like these that continue to stir up the zest in me, of becoming a surgeon, then going to "ground zero" and carrying out, what I believe is, my purpose in life. Yes, it might be over ambitious to think that all of a sudden, I will eliminate the long lines of patients waiting for a doctor to attend to their surgical needs. Many a time, these patients are just waiting hoping that someone will get to them, and that when they do, there will be something that they can do to cure their illness/surgical issue. The fact is that most doctors in Cameroon and other developing nations that do take care of the surgical burden of patients are not trained as surgeons, they just learn by observing cases during medical school and maybe doing a couple. What that means is that their scope of surgical practice is quite limited and they can only effectively handle a limited amount of surgical disease burden. So you have very few doctors to begin with for an extraordinarily large population with no dedicated surgeon amongst them. Besides the fact that surgery gets my adrenaline pumping, that I like working with my hands, and I know surgery is my calling despite adversaries, it also happens to be the one specialty training that is in limited supply in the developing world and would benefit and save countless number of patients.
When done with training, I want to serve surgical patients and I want them to know that while they're waiting in line, there is someone who really does care about them, who is adequately trained and will do all within reason, within my capacity to help them. I say this because I was once in that position, and I know how it feels to be a child, in severe agony and pain, sitting outside a doctor's office with my parents, and thinking that no one cares about me, and that why is no one coming out here to help me. I will make sure that medical students or other doctors work along side with me, and in that way I'm training them too so that they can inturn use those skills to help patients.

This writing is ofcourse dedicated to Dr Mwenyemali and Dr. Sanoussi and the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons who are leading the way to train surgeons in Cameroon. This is a great implementation of the popular adage: it is better to teach a hungry man to fish than to give him a fish.

Thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts.