Highlight Sarah Gray, RN
Last year was Nurse Grays first trip volunteering with Faith in Practice. It was her first time flying out of the country.
Originally from Mississippi, she now lives and works at HCA Clearlake in Houston, TX.
Sarah started working with Dr. Anderson almost 2 years ago and was most enthusiastic to help him with the scoliosis cases he performs. When she was younger, she had scoliosis surgery herself so she knew what it felt like to be on the other side. She organically became the liaison between the young patients and their anxious parents as well.
Nurse Gray trusted Dr. Anderson would not ask her to do something he didn’t think she was capable of, so she committed to the mission trip with Faith in Practice.
She knew it was her time to grow and take a leap of faith. She now knows that nothing is perfect. She might not be as prepared as she wants to be for the cases she is working on, mostly for reasons out of her hands, like not having the right equipment or materials she is used to.
“But just like in real life, we just need to think outside the box and get it done” she said.
She wrote a beautiful post after her trip last year that I would love to share with you below.
Just words alone will never come close to describing the feeling that I felt this week. One week ago, I was so stressed about traveling out of the country for the first time, only knowing one person at a time, and being nervous to work in a hospital in another country with people I had just met. All the thoughts & ‘what ifs’ started racing through my head. As OR nurses, we always like to be prepared. We like to be prepared so the surgeries can run a lot smoother and so that we aren’t wasting time looking for things during surgery.
This week was different. This week was something you could never be prepared for. Something I learned this week is that you can never prepare for the unknown but only work around it. The people I met were nothing but kind to me and welcomed me with open arms. Hearing their stories and how they got to be who they are today was very inspiring. It is challenging to throw people who have never worked together into the operating room all at once. Was it difficult at times to find what we needed? Yes, in more ways than one. However, we never let that stop us from working as a team because we all had the same goal, which was changing each patient’s life. Patients who wait for years on end for people like us to come just so they can live a little better, so they can walk or see better. Not only does it impact them, but also their families and their households. You think about all these things when parents bring you their child, and even though we don’t come from the same culture or speak the same language, they put all their trust into you, helping their whole world. They trust in you that you will make it easier for their child to live a better life each day.
And that is when I realized the whole purpose of why I was there, why I traveled out of the country for the first time, and why I worked with people that I never met before. Because at the end of the day, all the things I was so stressed about didn’t matter anymore. My patients and their families are what mattered. Seeing them doing a lot better during their recoveries than what they started out as is what mattered. And having amazing and hardworking staff at Obras and from FIP is what made my stress and nerves go away. Anytime I needed anything, someone was always there to help me. I cannot thank and appreciate those people enough for what they did for me. To say I am fortunate to have this opportunity and work with these people would be an understatement. I am blessed and grateful that I got to experience something that is so great as this.
Patient Story: Greissy
Greissy, a 10-year-old little girl
lives over 2 hours away. She has been in pain for the last 6 years because her hernia has been getting bigger.
Her mother was worried because she didn’t have the financial means to cover any surgeries to help her daughter.
Last year her friends told her about Faith in Practice so she prayed that this would be a good fit for her little girl.
Yesterday, after a 3-hour surgery, Dr Romeo Ignacio successfully removed her hernia and Greissy stayed overnight at Obras for
Monitoring.
Her mother was so thankful to the team who helped her little girl and to God for connecting her with Faith in Practice.
Keep sending healing prayers our way💚
~ Anne Kuhn
