Kelli Arnesen, an ER nurse at Evergreen Hospital in Kirkland, will never be able to take first-world medical care for granted again. The 24-year-old Bellevue native recently returned from a volunteer mission to Southeast Asia aboard the Navy’s hospital ship Mercy, providing care to impoverished people in Vietnam and Cambodia.
“It was a life-changing experience,” said Arnesen. “It makes you so grateful for what we have here.”
Arnesen had never worked outside the U.S. before, but jumped at the opportunity when she was contacted by the alumni director from Brigham Young University’s nursing program. “I was pretty excited about it, once I got the overall picture of what this project was,” said Arnesen.
According to the Navy’s Web site, the U.S. military has been operating a hospital ship named Mercy since 1918. The current USNS Mercy, a 10-story former oil tanker based in San Diego, carries thousands of military personnel and civilian volunteers to aid missions in Southeast Asia every two years.
The goal of the mission, to “build good relations and partnerships between nations,” according to Arnesen, was reflected in the volunteer personnel. They hailed from the U.S., U.K., Australia, Japan and Canada, through a number of charity organizations. In addition to providing medical care, military and civilians alike help with building schools, digging wells, and other humanitarian aid.
Arnesen spent a month on the ship, visiting ports where patients would come aboard with their escorts to receive examinations, surgery, or just take a shower. Over the two weeks spent in each country, her team saw more than 800 patients among the ship’s 10 operating rooms.
“It was very impressive. The Navy’s done an outstanding job organizing something like this,” said Maple Valley resident Helen Walton, a nurse anesthetist in Enumclaw who served on the ship along with Arnesen.
Walton became involved after receiving an e-mail from Latter-day Saint charities asking for volunteers. Though they’d never met before the trip, Arnesen and Walton keep in touch, bonded by their unique experience. “I’ll talk about this any time,” said Walton. “It was so gratifying to help people and see what their lives are like.”
Arnesen had the opportunity to go ashore for a few days to participate in a MEDCAP (Medical Civic Action Program), where tens of thousands of patients came to be treated. “That was probably my favorite part,” said Arnesen, who enjoyed seeing the way her patients lived. “There wasn’t time to sit and talk on the ship.”
The medical staff worked 12-hour days, doing biopsies, surgeries and vaccinations. Some conditions were surprising to the U.S. aid workers, such as children with cleft palates or other birth defects that would have been corrected at birth here. The surgery “allowed them to have a normal face, a normal life,” said Arnesen.
Even common diseases such as hypertension and diabetes – treatable but incurable under the best conditions in the U.S. – are virtually uncontrollable in poor nations. “They tend to just live with it day by day,” said Arnesen.
Although the volunteers did their best to treat what they could, there was no way to ensure that patients would be able to afford access to appropriate follow-up care. It was an eye-opening experience for Arnesen. “We are very lucky to have what we have here, and to have laws that allow us to treat people from every income,” she said.
What was rewarding, she said, were the “little moments” where she realized that they were indeed making a difference. “I had a patient come up to me and ask, ‘When is the ship coming back? We just love that you’re here.’
“I feel blessed to have been able to be a part of it,” said Arnesen.
Sara Reardon is a student in the University of Washington Department of Communication News Laboratory.
