Change a life?

I have alluded to my need to help people before but I try not to talk too much about it. I do this simply because I don't want any praise of any sort from people for what I do to help people. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) once said "Give with the right, so the left doesn't know." (And if it's not correct like that then please correct me). I had been thinking about this for the past few days and it was a matter of fate that today at the majalis the maulana talked about the very same thing. Often times you see people donating, or doing any act simply for the sake of gaining praise from others. He went on to say that if you do end up doing these good deeds simply for the attention from other people, you will be seeking you're reward from them on the day of judgment.

I've kinda lost track of my thought so I'll be adding another part to this later... lol

With all that said, I am writing this entry to hopefully get more people to help others rather than seek praise(to be blunt, I could care less what anyone thinks). In any case, I watched the movie Slumdog Millionare and it went about describing a boy’s journey from living on the streets begging to becoming a millionaire. It was based in India where this went through anything and everything and the sad thing is that I know so many children face the same sort of trials and tribulations unnecessarily. While our children in America worry about getting a Wii, these children have to worry about making sure they have food to eat. I always thought I was going to work abroad for a few months and then come back home and work and then go back... But as of late I've become firmer in this idea of going abroad and helping children specifically. I have several things in mind that I want to tackle but they all stem from setting up a basis- an orphanage where these children will have proper schooling, clothing and most importantly food. With all the children that I hope to shelter, if ONE, only ONE goes on to college and that child goes on to put another positive effect on another child then I will have been successful. I'm not asking for anyone to go to the extreme of leaving the country and opening a orphanage. I wrote this entry to hopefully inspire someone to do something positive.
With that said, I would like to ask all of you all to come out to the protests in DC for the Palestinian crisis going on right now.

“A time of crisis is not just a time of anxiety and worry. It gives a chance, an opportunity, to choose well or to choose badly.”

Choose.

Hotel le Bon.

This is going to be a quick entry about my day at the Bon.

For those of you that don't know but for some reason care, I worked at Bon Secour's a small inner city hospital in West Baltimore. To give you an idea of the surrounding area, at my training, I heard 22ish gunshots. Anyways I worked phlebotomy in the ER for about a year, drawing blood, setting up IV's and some other stuff just to help out when things got wild. I loved the experience but then new management came in and apparently phlebotomists are not legally allowed to set up IV's. In the ER the vast majority of the patients need to have IV's in order to administer meds and repeat blood tests so me sitting there doing only straight sticks was kind of worthless and long story short they eliminated that position all together. I then started working as an accessioning clerk in the lab, basically prepping all of the specimens to go through with their lab tests, very boring in comparison with the ER. Now that I completed my first semester of nursing school I can work as a ER tech doing everything I was doing as a phlebotomist + a lot more (BALLING).

Anyway, I was working in a clinic that is a part of Bon Secour where I worked over the summer filling in for the resident phlebotomist there. I was just getting used to drawing blood again and getting used to the system since the most amount of work in that office was dealing with insurances rather then actually collecting the specimens. On my break I walked over to the ER and met with one of the ER supervisors and she told me that they were hoping I was going to be done soon so I could join back up *SCORE*. We then walked around the ER for a second and I saw a bunch of the old staff as well as a lot of new staff. It was nice seeing everyone and they actually did some upgrades as well. I'm really excited to be back in the ER, hopefully by January I'll be setting up IV's telling people that its my first day again. When I got back from my break I continued drawing blood... definitely had some rust but it wasn't too bad, I didn't miss anyone except for a lady that was simply unstickable. While I was in the middle of drawing blood I heard on of the people working the office proceed to flip on this doctor. It was kind of out of the blue and I was completely caught off guard especially since I had just stuck the needle into my patients arm (lemme know if that made your arm twitch ;-) ). Apparently this doctor talked down to all the women in the office, granted the only men in the office was me and another doctor. I think its pretty whack how people can just talk down to another person regardless of who they are, where their from and so on. But I made sure not to pass any judgments on this doctor and it turned out to be essential. I had to draw his blood later in the day and I knew that if I did it out of anger then there would be no point in drawing his blood anyway since the whole point of me working in health care is to help people. Funny thing is that the doctor was mad scared... more scared than the 8 year old I stuck earlier in the day. As I was leaving for the day, I had to drop off specimens in the actual hospital's lab. When I saw the lady working in accessioning (she had trained me before) I told her I had brought her a present. Her response was "why couldn't you have just brought your self with out the blood"... most awkward moment ever... even more so because she’s about 50.
End of story.

Props to the Pops

Today I was at my last day of clinical at Stella Maris, an upscale nursing home out in Timonium. I was sitting at the table with my patient while starting to fill out my clinical evaluation. As I was about to write the date I realized it was my dad’s birthday and all of a sudden I just stopped and everything blurred out for a second. Took me a second to come back to reality and realize what was going on. I finished chatting with my patient about football then I went to the nursing station and had to take a minute to my self. All these old memories started cycling through my head like a movie. One of the memories that clearly stuck out and always does is of me giving my father a hug on Eid and a telling him I'm sorry that I had nothing to give him. But his reply was the most genuine and loving thing saying simply that the hug and love was plenty. Every holiday this memory comes up like a broken record and every holiday or birthday I still have to take a step back and collect my self. I sat there for a couple minutes and just kept my head in my hands and pulled the "I-only-got-4-hours-of-sleep" bull... except I wasn't lying about that [haha]. Throughout these memories I watched a recurring pattern and I remembered what set him apart from any other person. He was the most helpful and caring person I ever encountered- no matter who needed what, he was going to make sure he helped. This however is only half of it - I was oblivious to the degree that he went since he would never talk about it. When he passed away and people came to give their condolences it was as if though they were talking of a different person (not that he was uncaring or unhelpful to us at all). Every person that came said the same thing "You're father did so much for me" or "I never met anyone that was willing to help with anything as much as he was". As I started to come back to reality I realized that this was an obvious message and I remembered why I am in the health care field in the first place. I immediately felt happy and content and went about the rest of the clinical with my father in mind and thought about how much he gained and grew from bringing a smile to people's faces. Even on my way home, passing an elementary school - there was a crosswalk guard standing in the rain... I clearly remember my dad making me wave to the cross guard every morning with a smile just so that he or she may smile.

It’s funny as I’m writing this tears are on the verge of coming out but I’m ridiculously happy.

I'll leave you with a quote that I feel we should all live by.

“Associate with people in such a manner, that they weep for you when you die and long for you if you are alive.” -Imam Ali

Not that I feel that we should base our life on how others feel about us but rather we should base it on treating people with genuine love and respect.