Coming from an underdeveloped country in West Africa, it was not uncommon to see many individuals who were not fortunate enough to receive quality healthcare. While being a country rich in resources, the Government was not very sparing in distributing the revenue received to important avenues such as healthcare, infrastructure, food, clean water, and electricity. The country of Nigeria is a country in which your income indicates whether or not you receive quality healthcare in a hospital or you received care from members in the family. Receiving treatment from family members included being given medicinal herbs and other home remedies that sometimes proved to be very helpful in treating the victim.
My younger brother had a particular condition in which there was a bulge in the area of his navel which caused his belly button to appear swollen. My parents got in touch with the doctor who assisted in his birth and the only solution to the condition, an umbilical hernia, was surgery. My parents opted for surgery and the doctor was to operate on my brother. Post – surgery, my brother came out of the hospital with more complications than he went to the hospital with. Not only was the doctor unable to fix the umbilical hernia but my brother was left with leakage every time he had to urinate. It is important to note that Nigerians did not have the privilege of suing doctors for malpractice or for any complications that the patient suffered.
I was confused as to why the hospital was a place where individuals were supposed to go to get better but my brother ended up coming out of the hospital in a condition worse than how he went in. I had the utmost respect for in home caretakers and doctors alike because I admired the capability they had to heal the sick and take care of the wounded. Before the incident with my brother I was very keen on going into the healthcare field because of the pure admiration I had for individuals who could heal the sick. However, upon seeing that a doctor could not only fix a problem but also add another problem unto an existing problem, my admiration for doctors was lost and so was my drive to go into healthcare.
However, there was an event that triggered me to change my stance on developing a career in the healthcare field. On a Sunday afternoon, my family and I were coming back from church and it was not unusual to see beggars ask for monetary donations on the road. There was a woman with a very large tumor on the left side of her chest that was amongst the beggars asking for money. My parents quickly told my brothers and I to turn away and avoid looking at the sight as it was displeasing to the eye. I could not turn away and I asked my parents what had happened to the woman’s left chest because at the time I did not know what a tumor was. They just told me that the woman needed to go to the hospital to get it fixed and since that day, I took a great interest in how doctors could take out something that large out of a woman. That event coupled with my brother’s incident planted the seed of a career in the field of medicine in me.
A couple of years after moving to the United States, my parents sought out a doctor that could fix my brother’s hernia and the complications he had developed from the previous surgery. My parents soon found a doctor, scheduled the surgery, and lo and behold my brother’s hernia and complications were fixed. I noticed the stark difference between the quality of healthcare in the United States and Nigeria. I also noticed that most doctors were not just money hungry but they actually took their patients into consideration and cared about their patients as a whole. The technological advances made in the medical field in the United States astonished me and I was in pure admiration at the progress that America had made in the healthcare industry. At that point, I knew that I wanted to go into the medical field. I became proactive and took Biology, Chemistry, and Anatomy classes in high school and I fell in love with the intricacies and possibilities of the human body.
My father established a non-profit organization in Nigeria that focuses on providing quality healthcare and medical equipment for the blind. He traveled back to Nigeria a couple of years ago and it was evident that nothing had changed about the quality of healthcare in the country. The hospitals still looked dirty and there was no medical equipment that could match those in America. My dream is to become a surgeon and to go back to Nigeria so that I could help out the less fortunate and those that may have been victims of complications from surgery. Occasionally, when I want to give up on the long hours of studying, I think of the woman with the tumor on her left chest and remember why I want to become a doctor. I know that the journey to becoming a doctor is extensive and tough but the result that comes from being a blessing unto others is far greater than the sacrifices that have to be made to accomplish my dreams. To be able to go back to Nigeria and work with others that want to improve the quality of healthcare in the country is a dream that I strive for each day.
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What is the purpose to publish your essay publically? If this essay is for applying US med schools, you should know that GPA, MCAT and medical EC’s are by far weighted by medical school adcoms. In addition, there is no FA, not even loans for internationals in US med schools, regardless how few internationals were matriculated.